Experiencing Change
by Vampire-Badger
Summary: Genderbent- Altair is the first assassin in history to be cursed to change between a man and a woman, but he will not be the last. Others will follow, and the future of the order will never be the same. Rated for safety.
1. Chapter 1: Altair

**a/n: It's not my intention to offend any readers with gender identity issues and if I accidentally do, I sincerely apologize. **

** -/-**

It comes over him suddenly, between one moment and the next, a single instant of change that pours into him like water pouring from a jug, filling him from top to bottom with a strange kind of energy. He feels suddenly on edge, like every piece of himself has been filled up with nervous, excited energy, and then a wave of dizziness and exhaustion sweeps over and through him, so abruptly that he stumbles. One hand reaches out and Altair catches himself on the bureau wall before he can fall. His vision is swimming and his chest feels suddenly tight, so that he's nearly gasping for breath.

Then his vision clears, and Altair finds himself staring, uncomprehending, at the hand in front of him. Disbelieving, because it is not his.

The hand clearly belongs to a woman. The fingers are long and narrow, not delicate by any stretch of the imagination, but too small to be his own. Except- there is the missing finger, with its ragged scar from when he reached the rank of full assassin. And there is the old burn mark from when he was a child, and fell too close to a cooking fire. Even the nails, bitten to the quick in the only nervous habit he allows himself, are familiar.

But this hand is not his own.

He feels like he's in a dream, and everything suddenly seems to move in slow motion. He moves first one finger, then the others, and watches the hand on his wall (not his hand, not his hand, that's impossible, hands don't just _change _for no reason) move in response. It scares him a little, and he draws his hands up to his face, staring at them as though he's never seen them before.

Because he hasn't- these hands aren't his, and all at once Altair becomes aware of other oddities of his body- the tightness in his chest suddenly seems unbearable, and there's something off balance around his hips and waist.

There are footsteps behind him, barely audible on the stone floor, and Altair turns sharply to see whose they are- his eyes are wide, and his mouth half open. He's shaking, and some dim, distant part of his mind tells him that this is panic. He does not normally panic, cannot actually remember the last time he did so, but this sudden change in his own body has him terrified.

Malik is there, halfway across the room with one eyebrow raised into a sort of question. There is no concern there- of course there isn't, why should there be, after Altair cost Malik his brother and his arm and his role as an assassin- and if anything he seems exasperated and angry. You've caused enough trouble, his look seems to say. Don't you dare cause any more.

"What headache have you brought for me now?" he snaps, and under any other circumstance Altair would have bristled, and his pride would have forced him to answer in kind. Only now- now, with everything else suddenly in question, Altair needs desperately for someone else to see him, to tell him whether he has simply lost his mind, or if- somehow…

There is an awful, choking vice around his throat, and Altair cannot force as much as a single word past the barrier. Instead, he stumbles forward and reaches out, forcing his hands into Malik's unwilling grasp.

"What-"

Then Malik stops, staring down at Altair's hands, really looking at them, an intense frown on his face. For a moment they stand there, frozen in a silent tableau, until Malik shakes Altair away and reaches for his hood, tugging it down so his face is visible. Altair scowls-Malik is a full head taller than him, and standing this close, Altair has to look almost straight up to see his face.

Finally, in a flat, clearly disbelieving tone, Malik says- "Altair, you are a woman."

And Altair nods, like this is no big surprise, like it isn't manifestly impossible, like the world still makes sense. His (her?) head feels like its stuffed full of cotton, making it impossible for him (her- no, him- he cannot think of himself as a woman) to think straight. Everything is suddenly upside down, and Altair isn't surprised when his knees buckle. Malik moves to grab him before he hits the ground, but Altair pushes him roughly away. Just because he is a… a _she_ now, it doesn't mean he'll take help from a man that's made it perfectly clear he hates him. "Don't," he says, and the sound of his own voice is wrong in his ears. Too high, and too soft, not-

Altair stands and takes several steps back, shaking his head as if to deny everything. Then he turns, and he runs.

-/-

The rest of that day is a blur. Altair runs with a kind of terrified blindness, unconcerned with where he is going or what is around him. Or who, for that matter- it isn't until evening, Malik finds him on one of the tallest rooftops of the city that Altair realizes the dai has come looking for him.

"You fool," Malik tells him. "What good will running do?"

No good at all, Altair knows, and for the first time in hours his vision seems to clear, shame and embarrassment edging out the fear. "I have no idea what happened," he says bluntly.

Malik gives him a look that says plainly he has a hard time believing this- and had he been in his shoes, he would have assumed the… transformation to be his own fault. Things like this just didn't_ happen_. But to his credit, Malik keeps his thoughts to himself. Instead, he asks, "Can you undo…" his eyes sweep over Altair, taking in the sight of him from head to foot. "… this?"

"No," Altair says, hopelessly. "I don't even know how it happened the first time."

Malik makes a disapproving noise. "Then stop running and hiding," he tells him. "What difference does it make, really?"

A lot of difference, Altair thinks. He keeps silent, though, and forces herself to think the question over critically. After all, there is nothing he can do to control the situation he's been put in- but he can control his own reactions.

"Do you have a mirror?" he asks. There are a few in Masyaf, but they are small, expensive objects, and he does not expect to find any in Malik's keeping. But to his surprise, he nods.

"At the bureau," he says.

They travel back together, mostly in silence until they are only a few minutes away. Finally, Altair swallows his pride enough to ask the question that has been gnawing at him since Malik first climbed the rooftops to come after him.

He has one arm. Climbing is difficult for him now- he can see him struggling now, but he says nothing and neither does he. And Altair hadn't exactly been moving slowly, so it must have taken a lot of effort for Malik to finally corner him. "Why did you come after me?" he asks.

He glances sideways at Malik and catches him half smiling. "Because you are a woman," he says, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Altair comes very close to hitting him at that moment. "Because I am a woman," he says. "You mean that just because I have-" his tongue stumbles on the biological details of his change, and he does his best to recover. "You think I need to be protected?"

"Of course not," Malik says. They come to the roof of the bureau and Malik drops through, showing a surprising amount of grace given his missing arm. Altair follows him, somewhat more awkwardly in his twisted body. Malik goes on speaking without looking at him. "I lost my arm and my brother because of you," he says. "Now you have lost your…" he disappears into a back room, reemerging a moment later with the promised mirror. "Manhood."

It is not an offer of forgiveness. Altair has long since accepted that he will have to earn Malik's friendship back. This is more of a promise- Altair has hurt Malik in a way he can never make up for, but now Malik knows something about Altair that no one else can ever learn. They are tied together, for better or for worse.

He accepts the mirror- a tiny thing, hardly larger than his hand, but it will do- and begins to undress. The other assassins that frequent Jerusalem are away from the night, running errands or missions, or simply busy with other plans. There is little chance that anyone will walk in on them, and modesty with this body that isn't his seems pointless.

Finally, he stands naked in the middle of the room, robes and underclothes folded neatly on the ground nearby. Malik sits on his desk, clearly not sure where to look. After nearly half an hour spent in silent contemplation, testing himself, seeing what he can do, Altair speaks. "It could have been worse," he says.

"Just what I was thinking," Malik says dryly.

Altair ignores him. Honestly, now that he is calm enough to be unbiased, Altair has to admit to himself that he has not changed as much as he'd assumed. True, there are certain undeniable differences between a man's body and a woman's that will take some getting used to. He'll have to find some way to bind his chest in future, and a growing tightness in his bladder reminds him that he will have to face that particular horror soon. Besides that, he feels smaller than he is used to. He has always been short, of course, but this body has a slightness to it that will take a while to get used to. He is not weak by any stretch of the imagination- he still has the strength and musculature he is used to, enough to perform his duties.

His fingers are smaller, his hips larger, and his face shifted in some indefinable way that makes it seem feminine without leaving it unrecognizable. When he looks at himself in Malik's mirror, he sees someone that could be his sister, had he ever had siblings. But the face in the mirror moves as his does, and Altair can't watch it for long. He puts the mirror facedown on Malik's counter and does not look into it again.

His skin is smoother than he is used to, as well. There is some hair on his legs and under his arms, but the rest of his hair is gone. Conversely, the hair on his head is as short as ever, a style that looks out of place on a woman. Altair notes, in a distracted sort of way, that he will have to let it grow or risk looking out of place, and being noticed.

"I don't look that different," Altair tells Malik.

"You look like a woman."

"I could pass as a man," Altair says. "No one has to know."

Malik stands, and walks slowly around Altair. For the first time, he seems to be truly considering Altair and his new body. With anyone else, being subjected to such an intense scrutiny would have left Altair uncomfortable and upset. But this is Malik- they've known each other for years, and seen each other without clothes more than once, when they were boys, sharing a room with the other novices of their year, and later, when one or the other would be injured and need immediate treatment. Malik's examination is strictly clinical, like a doctor looking over a patient, rather than a man looking at a woman.

"I remember that scar," he says at last. He gestures at a thin, red scar that runs across Altair's left knee. "You fell."

"I was twelve," Altair says. He'd been stupid and overeager, and fallen down a flight of stairs on the second floor of the keep. Of course Malik would remember this scar, out of the dozens that mar his body. It is by far the least impressive.

"This one's new, though," Malik adds, pointing to a half healed mark on Altair's shoulder. Altair only nods, and Malik doesn't press. That one is from Solomon's Temple, a minor injury that pales in comparison to what Malik lost that day.

"Do you have an opinion?" Altair asks, changing the subject.

"I'm not sure," Malik says, doubtfully. "It would obviously be easier for you to pass as a man than it would be for most women. You were one this morning."

"And?"

"You're not a particularly striking woman," Malik goes on, and for a second Altair is torn on whether or not to feel insulted by this. "Homely, I think."

Yes, Altair decides- this is definitely meant to be insulting.

"Which should help you hide your-" his eyes flick downward for half a second, then back up to Altair's face. "Changes. If anything gives you away, I assume it would be your voice. You don't look too different, but you definitely do not sound like a man."

Altair nods, satisfied with this, and begins to redress himself. He's never been one to speak more than he has to, so this is not as much of a sacrifice as it could have been. When he is finished, he nods at Malik, and says "thank you."

Malik says nothing, but he nods as well. The two of them have shared something today, a secret that will paint either of them as mad if anyone ever finds out.

Today has been a truly strange day.

-/-

Two weeks pass before Altair faces his first real challenge as a woman. By that point, he has adjusted to the changes in his body, so much so that he can go hours without thinking about the impossibility of it all. And then comes the bleeding.

For a moment, the first time he goes to relief himself and finds his underclothes stained with red, Altair thinks he is dying. Then he pulls himself together- there is no injury and no pain, only a certain heaviness in the area.

(Later there _will _be pain, a heavy, creeping pain that will be difficult to hide, but for now he has no idea of what is coming)

He's heard of this, of course, but only in the odd comment from women in the village, and once from a jaded boy Altair had spent his years as a novice with, who had five older sisters and a pair of female cousins in his house. But he has few hard facts to rely on, and no one to ask. So he struggles through that first month alone, bleeding and sick and scared. He hates the fear, but hates more than that the tears that seem to come at the drop of a hat. Altair hasn't cried since he was a child, but during the week of his bleeding, Altair feels raw and unhappy. Minor problems are suddenly insurmountable, and he hates losing control of his emotions like this.

He is in the middle of a mission when the bleeding begins, and the stress of the assassination do nothing to make anything less difficult. When it's over, instead of riding straight back to Masyaf, Altair rides to Jerusalem. It's stupid and pathetic and unbearably needy, but Altair needs badly to be with someone that will understand. Or if not understand, at least listen. That can only mean Malik, because after all no one else knows that Altair is now a woman.

He arrives on the dai's doorstep sometime around dawn. There is a troupe of seven journeymen nearby, chasing flags and in general doing a poor job of obeying the third tenant of the creed- still, hiding in plain sight is generally difficult for children, and in general they seem indistinguishable from any of the noisy, wild street rats that roam the city streets. Besides- keeping them in line seems like a Herculean task, more than any dai could be expected to shoulder.

And in fact, Malik seems more harried than usual that morning. He is obviously too busy to listen to Altair's problems, so he waits, watching the journeymen along with Malik.

"Some of them show promise," he says.

"Too few," Malik says, and then sighs. "Well, they're new to all this. Most of them were novices a few weeks ago. They'll learn, if they're lucky."

Altair watches them push and shove at each other, climbing after the flags but falling more often than not. One falls onto a cart carrying a bunch of squawking chickens, and he winces. "That one will learn," he says, as the journeyman in question jumps from the cart, covered in feathers and scratch marks. "He will not fall again."

"Hmm," Malik says. Then, changing the subject completely, says, "I've been thinking."

"Oh?"

"There should be more women in the order."

"You mean any at all," Altair corrects.

"I mean more than one," Malik says pointedly, and Altair heaves a sigh.

"You're not as funny as you think you are," he says.

Malik smiles in a self-satisfied manner, but only for a moment. It fades quickly into a serious expression. "Seriously, though," he says. "There's no reason to exclude them."

"I suppose not," Altair says, and frowned. It's the first time he's ever considered- seriously considered- that his position could be at risk if anyone were to find out his secret. "I'll be inside if you need me," he says, and vanishes before Malik can say another word.

The idea of being forced out because of his body, something he has no control over, haunts Altair for hours. His emotions are already running wild from his bleeding, and Malik's words- innocently meant- do nothing to help. He curls onto a bed in a disused room. The pain comes back again too, and when Malik finds him, hours later, it is all Altair can do to keep himself from crying and blurting out everything.

Instead, he describes his bleeding and the side effects as clinically as he can. When he's done, Malik offers- "You need a girlfriend."

Altair snorts. "That's the last thing I need right now."

"A boyfriend, then," Malik says, apparently perfectly serious.

"Are you volunteering yourself?" Altair asks, and watches with a certain amount of satisfaction as Malik quickly backpedals. He feels slightly better after that, and when the bleeding slows and then stops a few days later, Altair has no problem leaving.

-/-

He meets her- if 'meet' is the right word- at the funeral of Mard Addin.

When Altair finally beats de Sable to the ground and forces the helmet off his head, it is a woman there. A stranger, one Altair has never seen before. He does wonder for a moment if this woman could be de Sable, if he could have been cursed to share whatever strange fate has befallen Altair. But where Altair's face is nearly unchanged from the transformation, this woman looks nothing like de Sable. No- she is a different person completely, apparently a double that Robert has sent in his place.

He should be worried about where de Sable has gone, but he isn't. All Altair can think of is that woman. She can fight as well as he can, and when she speaks he knows that she has a strength that he can never hope to match. He was born a man, into a life that he was extremely well suited for. She must have fought tooth and nail for everything she has, and he admires her for that.

If he's honest with himself, it's more than admiration. He obsesses over her, thinks of her all the time, wonders about her name, her life, who she is as a person. For a long time he tries to find her, but without any luck. He doesn't even know her name, which makes his task much more difficult.

Of course, by the time he realizes how desperately he wants to speak to this woman, his life has changed completely for the second time. The mentor is dead, by Altair's own hand, and Altair has been chosen to take the man's place. There are a million things to do, and Altair has no time to do all of it, much less track down strange women. Especially women that are probably templars.

Then, something amazing happens.

He finds her again. Her name, it turns out, is Maria. She is a templar, as he suspected, but in the end that makes no difference. Altair falls in love with her, and no amount of logic can stop him. Not that they are on opposite sides of a war that seems like it will go on forever, and not that he is still technically a woman himself.

Except that he has never felt less like a woman than the day Maria agrees to come back to Masyaf with him. He feels like a man, a man in love, and all that seems to matter more than whatever impossible changes his body has gone through.

Maybe that is why he changes back. He never knows for certain, and in fact he was never afterward able to pinpoint the exact moment he shifted back from woman to man. He didn't complain- it was a relief not to keep a secret anymore, and as far as Altair could tell, there was no reason the change should not be permanent this time.

And if it were only another temporary change- well, he knows how to hide it now.

-/-

Years later, Altair will discover that he does not know how to hide his womanhood as well as he imagines. From time to time, sometimes for only a few hours, and once as long as a year, Altair wakes to find himself a woman again. He grows to accept that this is simply the way his life must be, and does his best to hide the truth from everyone around him. Malik remains his one confidante, and over time his shifting gender becomes as commonplace an occurrence as the changing of the seasons.

But nothing lasts forever. It's the middle of the night in the hottest month of the year, and Altair finds himself still awake, trying to calm his son. Darim is teething, crying and wailing like it's the end of the world, and so Altair takes him away from the rooms the three of them share, hoping to keep from waking Maria.

He's half naked, his chest bare in deference to the sweltering heat of the season. Normally this would make no difference, but tonight, when Altair finally manages to quiet Darim, he realizes that he has made the change from man to woman without even realizing. By now, both forms are so familiar to him that to be a woman feels as natural as a man. Altair has gotten used to the fact that he'll bleed once a month as a woman, and smell worse as a man. He is simply _himself, _no matter what he looks like at any given moment.

But that doesn't mean he wants anyone else to know, ever, and when he hears footsteps behind him, Altair can't help but freeze.

"Altair?"

It's Maria's voice, fuzzy from sleep, and he knows from her tone that she hasn't realized yet. It's dark, he has his back to her, and she is not fully awake. But the moment he turns around, she will know. She will see his face, his figure, and- most damning of all- breasts. And she will know.

He turns anyway, because she is his wife and he has lied to her for far too long. At first, she doesn't seem to notice anything is wrong, and Altair has a wild, selfish thought that maybe this isn't the end of everything after all. Then her eyes go wide, all traces of sleep vanishing abruptly. "Who-" she stops abruptly, unwilling or unable to go on. Altair stands in silence, wanting nothing more than to turn away. He doesn't, though, not even when Maria comes to stand right next to him. Her gaze, suddenly hard and unflinching, sweeps over him, studying him.

Then she brings up her hands, running them over his half naked body. Altair stands like a stone, and for a long moment Maria doesn't move either. Both of them are still and silent until Darim- pressed uncomfortably between his parents, begins to cry again. Maria takes him from Altair's unprotesting arms (you have lied to me, her face seems to say, you have lied and can no longer be trusted with our child). Then she leaves, without another word passing between them.

Altair considers running after her. He wants to explain- for a long time now, the need to tell Maria the truth has been eating Altair from the inside out. But he has been afraid, and delayed when he should have acted, and now it is too late. Running after Maria now will only anger her further, so Altair turns in another direction instead- he cannot go home, and he cannot wander the keep half dressed as he is. The only place he can safely go is to Malik, and so he does.

If his friend is surprised to see Altair arrive on his doorstep, miserable, nearly naked, and once again a woman, he hides it well. "So?" he says casually, stepping back to allow Altair inside. "It's late for a visit. What's gone wrong now?"

Altair tells him the story in quick, terse words. By the time he is dressed again in borrowed robes, Malik knows it all. Altair can see him itching to say how much of a fool he is, but for now at least he has the decency to wait. "What will you do?" he asks instead.

"Explain, I suppose," he says. "If she gives me a chance. Although it will be hard to explain what I don't understand myself." Even now, years later, he still has no idea what caused the original transformation, or why his body has seemed unable to decide on a gender ever since.

Malik nods- there is little else Altair can do, unless he wants to let Maria go. And he doesn't, because she is his wife, and he loves her too much to keep lying to her. If she wants to leave, there's nothing he can do to stop her. But he very much wants to try.

The day is taken up with matters of the order. Some things cannot be put on hold, no matter what may be going on in Altair's personal life, but he is too distracted to do his job well. The others around him seem to notice this, if nothing else, and leave him well alone. Then, a little before sundown, Maria comes to see him. She has been in this room, the office where Altair does most of his work, many times before. Still, there is an almost unbearable tension to the room now, and Altair watches her anxiously, waiting for her to speak.

She does not leave him waiting long. Maria's voice is almost desperate when she speaks, clearly as eager for answers as Altair is to give them. There are shadows under her eyes, and her face is pale. Altair doubts that she slept at all after finding him in the hall the night before.

"We have a child together," she says. "I know you are a man. I know this."

"Only sometimes," Altair says. He has grown used to disguising his voice during the times when he is a woman, pitching it low and speaking quietly. It is a hassle though, and yet another lie- he doesn't bother with it now, and Maria shakes her head disbelievingly. Whether because of his voice or because of his words, he does not know.

"Why?" she asks.

"I don't know."

"Well then, why didn't you tell me?" she asks.

"I was afraid," he says. "I still am afraid." This is something he has never admitted, not even to Malik. It's likely the man is not fooled, especially as he was there on the first day. They don't talk about it though.

"You are afraid of being a woman," Maria says, flatly.

"What?" Altair hesitates, surprised by the question. He is occasionally discomforted by being a woman, and often confused. Not afraid, though.

"Do you think you are too good to be a woman?"

"No-"

"You think-"

"Maria!" he does not yell, because he knows that will only spur her to shout in response. Once they are screaming at one another, there will be no chance at talking matters out, no chance at reconciliation. So he does not yell, but he speaks with force. "I am _not _afraid of being a woman. I am afraid of being both a woman and a man, and of being discovered as a freak of nature."

She hesitates, then nods, accepting this answer and calming a little. "You are not," she says.

Altair snorts. "I am," he says. "Everyone on Earth is born, either a man or a woman. How many others are cursed as I am? To be both- to change…" he manages a deep breath, and goes on. "I don't mind that part, not anymore, but I am afraid that others will find out and I will lose everything. That you will find out and I will lose you…"

Maria shakes her head and steps closer, shaking only slightly, to hold him. Their bodies fit together strangely, differently than the way he is used to. Then he stops focusing on the shape of his body and hers, drawing comfort instead from knowing that somehow, for some reason, she is still there and does not plan to leave.

"No more secrets," she tells him. "If you ever keep a secret like this from me again-"

He laughs. "What other secret could be as big as this one?"

She doesn't answer. "And you do not lie to our children," she says. "They deserve to know the truth."

He nods- then draws back from her slightly. "Children," he says. "We only have one son."

"For now," Maria says, and Altair's eyes are drawn downward, to where her hand rests on her stomach.

"You are-"

"I had planned to tell you in different circumstances than these," she says. "But I am pregnant again."

And she smiles- a beautiful, happy smile that makes Altair feel blessed just for seeing.

"I love you," he says.

"And I love you," she says. "But next time-" she nudges him teasingly. "I think it's your turn to carry the child."

"We would need another man for that," Altair says, keeping a straight face with effort.

"Perhaps Malik?" Maria suggests, her voice teasing. Altair would have marveled at her ability to swing so quickly from anger back to happiness, had he not already known how emotional a simple monthly bleeding could be- pregnancy had to be worse. "I assume he knows already."

"Only because he was there the first time," Altair says. "He's kept my secret, but I don't think-"

"I'm teasing, Altair," Maria says. "Come on, now- it's time to go home."

-/-

True to his word, Altair never hides his condition from their children. Darim and Sef grow up accepting their father and his changing body as normal. If anything, it is more difficult to convince them to keep it a secret. Sef especially seems to derive an endless amount of pleasure from telling everyone he meets, and eventually Altair has to sit down with him and explain that no, it's not alright to keep telling people that sometimes he has two mothers.

"Why?" Sef asks. He's five years old, tall for his age and still growing, shooting up too quickly for Altair and Maria to keep him in clothes- his legs hang out of whatever they put him in, and he seems to be mostly made out of knees and elbows.

"Because there are some things we don't need to tell people about," Altair says. "It's a secret, and it could be… dangerous if people were to find out."

"Why?" Sef asks. He looks genuinely confused, face crinkling up and eyebrows drawing together. Altair _knows_ he must be aware that other families aren't like theirs, but he doesn't think Sef really understands why that's bad.

"It's not normal," Altair says.

"But I want to tell people," Sef says, in a voice like a whine. "You're the best dad _ever _and sometimes you're a _girl _and no one else can do that and I want everyone to know!"

"Oh," Altair says, before he can stop himself. He's never even considered that his son might be _proud _of him. In his own mind, his transformations have never been anything more than a hassle and a curse to him. He isn't really sure what to do with this unexpected reaction, so he just shakes his head and asks Sef again to keep himself quiet. Later, he'll ask Maria for advice, and she'll laugh and give him exactly the advice he needs, as usual. She'll make it seem like the most obvious thing in the world, also as usual.

He has no idea what he would do without her.

"Dad?" Sef asks, calling Altair back to himself. He'd been sidetracked, lost in his own thoughts, not aware of his son gradually growing nervous and more fidgety.

"Yes?"

"Can I learn to do what you do?" Sef asks.

"You want to be a girl," Altair says, and only years of training keeps his voice calm. "Why?"

"I dunno," Sef mutters, shrugging. "It kind of looks like fun."

"It's not," Altair says.

"It's not fun?"

"No."

"Then what does it feel like?"

"It…" Altair hesitates, because it's honestly not something he thinks about much anymore. It just happens, and then he moves on with his life. But Sef is still staring up at him with his expression of innocent curiosity, clearly eager to know more. Altair frowns, and tries to think of a way to explain it that will let Sef understand.

"At first," he says at last, "It feels like catching a cold. Sort of dizzy and off balance. But only for a second and then it's gone, and it just feels a little strange. Like… wearing a pair of clothes that don't fit. But after a few times back and forth it gets easier to ignore, and sometimes I don't even notice I've changed."

Sef giggles. "And then mom has to tell you."

"Right," Altair sighs. In the years since Maria discovered his secret, he's gotten more lax about keeping his secret in private. There are certain steps he needs to take every time his gender changes, small things usually, depending where he is and whether he's coming or going. If he's in Masyaf and a woman, he has to bind his chest, change his voice, and wear looser robes that better conceal his figure. Changing back to a man is an easier transition, but he does need to remove his bindings, if nothing else. Otherwise they tend to slip uncomfortably.

Outside of the keep, the issue becomes a little more complicated- there have been times before when it was simply easier to pass unnoticed as a woman than as a man, and that means taking special care not to be caught, and labelled a cross dresser or a lunatic.

More than once, Altair has let his guard down around his family and simply forgotten to change clothing until Maria came by to tell him off, much to their sons' amusement. "Yes," he says aloud, in answer to Sef's question. "And then your mother has to tell me."

"So it doesn't feel like anything?" Sef asks, obviously disappointed. "I always thought…"

"What?"

"Never mind," Sef mumbles. Then, apparently unable to stay quiet, he goes on again. "You're different. Sometimes. When you're a girl, I mean, you act funny."

Altair tilts his head slightly to the side, considering this. He's known for many years that he tends to feel things more strongly as a woman than as a man, especially around the times of his bleedings. And maybe he does lead to other differences- a tendency to be more open around the people he trusts, and at the same time more cautious with those that don't know his secret.

(When he mentions this revelation to Maria and Malik some weeks after, his wife will laugh and wonder why it took him so long to notice- and then she will scowl when he reminds her that she hadn't even noticed he was a woman for years. Malik will only sigh and call him a fool and a novice, insults which Altair has heard so many times he barely even hears them any longer)

"I hadn't noticed," he tells Sef, and then quickly changes the subject. "The point is- if you keep telling people that I am a woman, I will be disappointed, and something will have to change."

"It's the truth," Sef says.

"I know," Altair says. "And I don't want to have to punish you for telling the truth, but you need to learn that there is a time and a place for the truth. Some truths are secrets for a reason, and this is one of them. If there comes a time and a place when you think it is appropriate to share what you know, then do so by all means."

"But not all the time," Sef says slowly.

"And not to everyone," Altair adds.

"Okay," Sef says, and that's the end of that.

-/-

In the end, Altair is happy to die a man.

After years- decades- of fluctuating between one gender and the other, he happens to be a man on the day of his death. There is no particular reason to prefer one form over the other, not anymore. There have been times in his life when he could not seem to settle on one form or the other, when he would change from man to woman and back a dozen times before noon, and times when he has been locked into man- or womanhood for months at a time. In retrospect, Sef's lifelong fascination with his father's gender may have come from the fact that Altair had been a woman for the first two years of his life.

Still, he had been born male (oh so many years ago now), and it is something of a relief to know he will die a man as well. Or maybe it is just a relief to know that he will die. His life has been a hard one, and a long one. He is nothing but an old man now- although this morning, he had been an old woman- trapped inside a decrepit old body that no longer does what he expects it to do.

Yes…

Yes, he is ready.

Safely hidden within the walls of the library he has spent so much time and effort building, Altair lowers himself into a chair. Tired muscles relax, finally and fully. He has not let his guard down enough to rest this well since before Maria's death. It is a great relief to do so now, and when he breathes out for the last time, feeling the last of his energy leave him at last, well- that is a relief, too.

But as his heart ceases to beat, as his lungs refuse to take another breath, there are still regrets. Some of these are for the mistakes- the many, many mistakes- he has made in his lifetime. If Altair had the chance to do it all over again, he knows now that there are many choices he would have made differently.

And more than that, Altair regrets that he was never able to discover the reason for his changing body. He has tried, certainly. In his travels he has spent a considerable amount of time and effort searching through texts and listening to the most obscure legends and baseless rumors he can find. Only he hears nothing that can even come close to explaining his situation, and as the world fades finally to darkness, Altair accepts at last that there are some mysteries in life that he will simply never be able to solve.

But something… something makes him open his eyes as he dies, and what he sees there is strange enough to bring a little bit of life back to him, to force his tired lungs to breathe again, and jump start his heart. There is a shadowy figure standing just in front of him, barely visible, so that Altair can make out only a vague form. The person could be anyone, man or woman, stranger or enemy or friend. Possibly they are only a hallucination brought on by his oncoming death.

The person, whomever he or she may be, kneels down in front of Altair, taking his cold, wrinkled hand in both of their own.

_"I'm sorry."_

The words come from the phantom, but they arrive in Altair's mind without passing through his ears on the way. They echo in his mind, whispered words that plead for understanding.

_"It's all my fault."_

And with the words, the answer comes suddenly rushing from the figure and into Altair's mind. He knows, finally, why he has been cursed to spend so much of his life as a woman. Over the years, Altair has spent more time than he should have imagining increasingly ridiculous explanations for his condition. None of these guesses are as impossible as the truth that now presents itself to him. The whole thing is completely insane, and so very, very sad.

"It's alright," he manages to say. And then, because it seems important, he manages to add a few more words. "I forgive you," he says.

And then he dies.


	2. Chapter 2: Ezio

Ezio's mother swears he was born with a penis, but he's not really sure he believes her. After all, his father can swear with equal fervor that when he'd first held his second child in his arms, it had been a daughter. There had been weeks of arguments, of frantically trying to keep an impossible secret, of wondering what strange sickness Ezio could have been born with.

Finally, Ezio's father decides that since his child can't seem to decide between being a boy or girl, he might as well make the choice himself. And so Ezio is, finally, named. He is given a boy's name because in this time and this place, men have an easier time making their way through the world than women do. It is not a pleasant truth, and it is a dilemma Ezio will become very familiar with during his lifetime. He becomes, in the eyes of the world, male.

Ezio grows up thinking of himself as- well, _him_self rather than _her_self. In all honesty, he spends nearly as much time living as a woman as a man, but it is surprisingly comforting to have some certainty to cling to during the hardest times.

And there are hard times- puberty is especially bad, going through two sets of changes to his body at once. He starts to really notice his body for the first time- it seems like he's in the middle of a growth spurt that never really ends, and sometimes he feels like nothing but knees and elbows and strange bits that don't quite fit where they're supposed to be. He grows hair in new places- on his chest, his legs, his armpits, his face. For the first time, he starts to notice girls. And boys, a little, although in the end, he decides he likes girls better. He does spend more time as a boy than a girl, and maybe that has something to do with it. Or maybe not. Ezio has learned not to question his body too much.

He also learns… other things.

He learns to be alone, because he doesn't get much of a choice. From the time he is old enough to understand that he is different, Ezio knows that being found out by strangers would be the worst thing that could happen to him. Nobody would understand, they would think he was just some sort of freak, or a monster, or something even worse.

There are many ways to hide, and Ezio learns them all. How to stay in the shadows and not be seen, and how to watch people without being watched in return. Until he's about fifteen, he knows how to hide his strangeness from everyone but his own family, who know him best. Then he gets curvy and after that there's no way his female form can be mistaken for anything but a woman.

So then he learns to disappear, and to do it quickly and quietly. There are signs he starts to recognize when he's about to change from one gender to the other, and he knows well enough to make sure he's alone when it happens.

Luckily, Ezio spends maybe one day a week as a woman- had it been any longer, he might have gone crazy from boredom. There's not much to do but sit up in his room by himself on those days, and it's awful. He spends the time pacing around or staring out the window- the rest of his days, the ones when he is himself, and free to go where he will and do what he wants, are spent causing as much trouble as he possibly can. He's always half afraid that one day he'll get stuck as a woman, and then-

"You could just learn to be a woman," his sister says one day when they're home alone together. Ezio is a woman and Claudia has a head cold, so while the rest of the family is away, having dinner with some friend of their father's, the two of them are left alone.

"What do you mean?"

"Wear a dress," Claudia says vaguely. "Do something with your hair, learn how to walk and talk and act like a woman."

"I'm not a woman," Ezio complains, utterly ignoring his current biology.

"At least you wouldn't be stuck inside all the time," she says. "And I wouldn't have to keep listening to you whine about it."

Ezio shakes his head and they don't mention it again- but he remembers.

-/-

When Ezio's father and brothers are killed, hanged right in front of him, Ezio's self-control slips for the first time in years. He's learned to be aware- almost painfully aware- of exactly what his body is doing at every moment of every day. It's better than not paying enough attention, and suddenly turning into a woman in the middle of a crowd. But the arrest and the hangings and the flight have turned everything upside down, and Ezio doesn't realize he's about to change until it's already too late.

It happens, appropriately enough, in a brothel. _La Rosa Colta_, run by a woman named Paola who tells him what he needs to know so that he can survive. Then, when he has done what he needs to do and returned to the brothel, she offers the services of his girls. Ezio accepts, even though he knows the loss of his family is something that can't be fixed or dulled by a night in bed with a strange woman. The look in Paola's eye as she makes the offer is enough to tell Ezio that she knows it won't fix anything either, but she offers anyway.

This is far from Ezio's first time with a woman, although it has been a long time since he's lain with anyone other than Christina.

(he'd loved her, he'd hoped to marry her- but she doesn't know his secret, doesn't know who or what he is, and so maybe it's better that she chose not to come with him)

Ezio considers himself a good lover. After all, he has spent time (more than he wants) as a woman himself, and knows exactly what to do in bed. He knows what is satisfying and what is simply taking things too far, and even though no two women are the same, and no two are looking for exactly the same things from a partner, Ezio still thinks he has talent.

The girl (he never catches her name) apparently agrees, because they stay at it until late into the night, when finally they fall away from each other. The pain of the day hasn't gone away, but for the moment at least, it has faded a little. For now, Ezio can sleep. Tomorrow there will be new problems, decisions, responsibilities that he is not at all ready to shoulder. But when he finally fades into a deep, dreamless night of sleep, Ezio is more than happy to stop thinking for a few hours, and just… sleep.

The next morning, he's awoken by a scream, high pitched and terrified, only inches away from his face. Ezio sits straight up, startled, and almost falls out of the narrow bed he's still sharing with the girl from last night. She's sitting- perching, really- on the opposite end of the bed, staring at him with eyes as wide as saucers. Ezio stares blankly for a second, then abruptly realizes that he's _changed during the night_.

He gapes, not sure at all what to do, utterly exhausted by what he's had to do already and what he still has left to worry about. There has to be something he can say, or do. Somehow, he has to fix this, because his whole life is already in pieces around him and he can't let his secret get out too.

The door bangs open and Paola comes striding in. Her eyes flick back and forth between Ezio and the girl, and for a second there's an expression of absolute shock on her face. Then she schools her expression into one of calm, and makes her way to the bed. "Go," she tells the girl, helping her to her feet and edging her back toward the door. "Tell no one of what you have seen."

"But-"

"No one," Paola says, more forcefully this time. The girl allows herself one last glance over her shoulder, but flinches when she sees Ezio, and hurries into the hall as quickly as she can. Paola closes the door behind her, then turns to face Ezio. She looks- angry, and Ezio feels his stomach twist in something like blind panic. This is what he's been afraid of for his entire life- that someone will find out. That they'll _see._

"I didn't expect this," she says at last.

Ezio opens his mouth, then shrugs and closes it again. "I can't help it," he says. "It's just the way my body works." She continues to look at him, with a constant, steady gaze, until eventually Ezio has no choice but to give in and explain everything.

Paola is relentless.

She insists on hearing every detail, often more than once. Ezio gives her everything she asks for without argument- he knows he's screwed no matter what, and that his only chance now is to somehow persuade Paola not to do anything. That means not doing anything at all to make her angry.

Her questions are wide ranging, and cover everything that could even possibly be related. They cover the frequency of his changes (sometimes two or three times in a single day, sometimes no more than once a month, but usually around once or twice a week). How it feels before and after and during (completely unremarkable, except for a little bit of dizziness, sometimes). What his family thought of it all (in general, they seem as confused about the whole thing as he is, and also vaguely relieved that none of them have the same problem). If there are any other problems with his body, besides the obvious (not really- Ezio has always been healthy and fit, no matter which gender he happens to be at the moment). She has a million other questions, and after a while they blur together. Ezio answers dutifully, but his mind is far from focused. He's exhausted and worried by the time she runs out of questions, but Paola seems almost invigorated by it all. Ezio reflects that is must be fascinating, for someone looking in from the outside. He's never been able to see it himself, of course. Too close. "You're impossible," she announces at the end.

Ezio manages a self-deprecating smile. "So my mother's told me," he says.

Paola laughs. "For somewhat different reasons, I imagine." Ezio nods- specifically, his mother had been lamenting his inability to stay out of trouble. He's always been good at finding fights, and coming home scraped up and bloody. She smiles at him, and goes on, changing the subject abruptly. "You told me that you spend about one day a week as a woman."

"Sometimes more," Ezio says, not quite sure where this is going. It still feels weird to be telling all this to someone he's just met. "Sometimes less."

Paola nods. "Then my question is why you haven't learned to conduct yourself as one?"

"Because…" Ezio hesitates, because honestly the reason he hides his female half from the world is that he is ashamed. There is something _wrong _with him, something deep and insidious and rotten. It should be physically impossible for his body to do what it does, but still the transformations continue. On bad days, Ezio feels like he's barely even human. It's not so much that he changes into a woman, it's that he changes at all.

He can tell by the look in her eyes that Paola wouldn't understand. She is a proud, strong woman, one who has fought against a male run world for everything she has. She would hear him say he is sick of being a woman, and understand it as a criticism of her entire gender. So Ezio stays silent, shrugging and staring at the floor in front of him.

Paola waits a minute, but when she realizes he's not planning to say anything else, she sighs and puts a hand on his shoulder. It is probably meant to be comforting, but it burns like fire and shame. "Well," she says. "That's not an option for you anymore."

"What isn't?" Ezio asks.

"Hiding." Paola straightens and leaves the room, leaving Ezio alone. He barely has time to wonder what on Earth she's talking about when she's back, carrying an armful of cloth that makes Ezio's stomach twist at the sight.

"I don't pretend to know what is coming next for you," Paola says. "But I can tell you that hiding won't be an option for you any longer. There are few enough safe places left in the world…"

"I don't understand," Ezio says, and she drops the fabric unceremoniously onto the bed between them.

"You must learn to pass as a woman," Paola says, bluntly. "In other circumstances, I would suggest binding, but I think your body would be too… uncooperative for that." Ezio winces, because she's right. There are certain parts of his body that tend to stick out, no matter what he does. It's always annoyed Claudia in particular that she has a brother that's bigger than she is.

"I don't want to," he says, fully aware that he sounds whiny at that moment. Even as he says it, he knows that she's right. If he's going to leave Firenze with his mother and Claudia, he needs some kind of a plan. Just in case something happens on the road- if he changes- well, it's bad enough already that one person knows.

Paola ignores him completely, and begins lecturing on the clothes she's brought in with her. To Ezio's relief, she's brought simple clothes, sturdy but plain, and not nearly as bad as he'd been dreading. They're traveling clothes, made for walking in, and good enough for now.

"Of course there's more to an identity than what you wear," Paola says. "You need to change the way you walk, the words you use, how you act and where you go."

"But that's everything," Ezio objects.

"Men and women are very different," Paola says, smiling. "You should know that already."

"I guess," Ezio says. "Only…"

"What?"

"Why are you helping me?" Ezio asks. "You don't have to. You could do- I don't know. Anything. You could tell everyone."

"Why should I?" Paola asks, and for the first time in a while, Ezio manages to relax a little. Somehow, for some reason he cannot understand, Paola has become his ally.

-/-

There isn't enough time for Paola to teach Ezio everything he needs to know before he leaves the city, but she forces what she can into his head and then, when he leaves, writes to friends and contacts, asking them to teach him more if they happen to cross paths with him. Sometimes she tells them the truth, and sometimes she invents a story that explains Ezio's naiveté without mentioning his condition.

At first, he resents her for meddling, but in the end he comes to accept it as necessary. Besides, as he gets older, as he becomes more deeply involved in the world of the assassins, he realizes that she is protecting him. The only people she ever tells are members of the order, and within a few years, it's common knowledge within the assassins that Ezio is, sometimes, a woman. By the time he moves on to Roma, and becomes the mentor there, very few people even bother to comment on the strange affair. New recruits are frequently surprised (one is so shocked she falls off the roof of a building, and needs to be rescued from the Tiber), but no one really says anything.

Not to his face, anyway. Ezio is not quite convinced that no one at all is interested, because after all, how many people are there like him in the world?

None, as far as he knows. He's spent some time looking, as he gets older, but no matter where he goes or who he asks or what books he reads, Ezio can't find as much as a whisper of a rumor about people like him. He hears about men and women who choose to abandon the gender they're born with, to dress and act and live as though they were men instead of women (or women instead of men). But none of them have bodies that physically change, and so Ezio becomes still more convinced that he is the only one.

It's very lonely.

He tries not to think about it, of course, but that only works for so long. Eventually, Ezio finds himself wishing there was someone he could really talk to about whatever he is. Except that's not possible, because there is no one in his life that could really listen- he is supposed to be the mentor of the assassins, a leader, not someone that is afraid of his own body and what it can do.

He shuts himself deep inside his own mind, brooding. He knows it's not healthy, but he also doesn't care. When there are other people around, he puts up a show, not exactly happy, but not as miserable as he is in private. It's a feeble pretense, but one no one seems to see through.

Except for Leonardo.

They have been friends a very long time by now, and Ezio knows immediately that Leonardo can see right through him. Still, it is a while before he tentatively brings the subject up, asking Ezio why he has been so upset lately.

Ezio only shrugs, because he can't quite bring himself to lie to his friend. He also can't bring himself to tell the truth- it would be terrible if he knew, and left, and… Ezio shakes his head sharply, realizing himself for the fool he is. He should know Leonardo better than that- he does know Leonardo better than that.

So he tells him everything. Not right there in the open, of course, sitting on a bench in the middle of a public thoroughfare where anyone can hear. They take rooms at an inn, one on the outskirts of the city where neither of them is known, and Ezio spills his secrets. All of them.

At the end, the artist's eyes are wide, and he's looking at Ezio like he's the most interesting thing in the world. Ezio has seen expressions just like that before, mostly on the faces of raw recruits, but it doesn't bother him when it comes from Leonardo. Other people always give him the impression they're seeing him as an object, some strange curiosity. Leonardo, on the other hand, looks at him like someone special, and it makes Ezio feel more human rather than less.

"Can I see?" Leonardo asks.

Ezio hesitates, then shakes his head. "I can't really control when it happens," he explains. "And even if I could, I wouldn't… I mean…" he trails off, completely at a loss. He's more or less accepted that there are people that will have to see him as a woman. As mentor of the order, he really can't afford to disappear without warning. But Leonardo is different, because he's not an assassin, he's a friend. And Ezio is-

Changing.

"Perfect," he mutters, but the complaint is halfhearted. He knows the signs well enough by now- there's no doubt about what's going on.

Leonardo watches in fascinated silence as Ezio feels his body shudder and change. He blinks and shakes his head, like a dog coming in from the rain, then looks anxiously toward Leonardo, waiting for some kind of reaction.

"Fascinating," the man breathes, and suddenly he's inches away from Ezio, practically vibrating with the obvious desire to look more closely, to touch, to examine. "Ezio, I wonder- you know I study the anatomy, right?"

"Yes," Ezio says, but cautiously, because he's pretty sure he knows where this is going.

"Would you- there's so much I can learn from you, and I mean, there's never been anyone like you before."

"Don't I know it," Ezio mutters, but he hesitates. As much as he hates to admit it, Leonardo is looking at him in a way that no one has ever looked at him before. Not like a freak. And he is the oldest friend Ezio has left. Surely there can't be anything wrong with letting him see… "Alright," he says.

Leonardo's eyes light up, and he dashes off to fetch supplies. He doesn't have much with him, but there's enough to make sketches, and Leonardo cheerfully announces that will be enough.

Ezio strips without waiting to be asked- he knows by now what Leonardo wants out of his models- and for a while he lets Leonardo examine him. The room stays silent for a long time, until finally Ezio decides he can't stand the awkwardness. "So," he says. "What do you think?"

Leonardo, obviously intent on his work, mumbles something that might contain real words, then colors slightly. "Sorry," he says. "I think you are beautiful."

There's an instant of absolute silence as Ezio wonders if he could possibly have heard that right, and Lsonardo seems to realize what he just said. His sketchbook falls to the ground, forgotten, as he leaps to his feet. Ezio watches in stunned silence as Leonardo's face goes red and hasty apologies spill from him like a waterfall.

"I don't mean anything, of course, he babbles. "Just that you are- strictly aesthetically- you are well proportioned, you fit the conventional ideas of beauty very well. Of course you are always an attractive person, I don't mean to insult-"

It's not an insult. Ezio has never heard anyone call him beautiful before, and it shouldn't matter. But it does. It matters a lot, because in his own mind he will never be anything but a misformed freak of nature. But Leonardo is an artist. He knows things about beauty.

Ezio can feel a small smile form on his face, almost against his will, but doesn't bother to fight it. In any case, it seems to calm Leonardo, who sees it and hesitates. Finally, with his face as red as a tomato, he asks, "have you ever... Slept with a man? As a woman?"

"No," Ezio says. He's never felt up to trying (even though he's wanted to for years, just to see what it's like, if it's different as a woman or not). How could he? There would be a risk to that, a much bigger one than he is willing to take. Greater than the risk he takes as a man. It's not just that he might change genders while naked and alone with someone, a naturally vulnerable time because there is no way to hide the transformation. Ever since that night at _La Rosa Colta, _he's been more careful about looking for the signs that tell him he's about to change. So far, there have been no more accidents.

So far.

And that's not the issue, anyway. Ezio would have satisfied his curiosity a long time ago, had that been the only problem. He would have, if only…

If he didn't…

It's just that the thought of lying with someone as a woman makes him feel naked in a way that has nothing at all to do with the sex. To expose that secret, hidden part of himself to anyone makes Ezio feel uncomfortable and unsafe.

But he really wants to know, all the same, and suddenly a thought occurs to Ezio. After all, this is Leonardo. If he can't trust him, he'll never be able to trust anyone. And this might be the best chance he ever has to say something. Ezio can feel the question start to form on his tongue. _"Do you want to..? Would you mind- Just as an experiment…" _ It's filling his mind, begging to be asked, but the words trip over themselves and he can't think of a good way to say it.

And in the end, he can't say anything.

The room falls again into silence, so thick and heavy he imagines he can feel it settling on his shoulders and weighing him down. Leonardo looks like he's feeling it too, and Ezio watches his hand slow and eventually stop altogether. He looks up at Ezio, who reads in his eyes the same unasked question he's trying to force out.

They share a look, and neither of them says a word. They don't have to. Just that look is enough.

-/-

Ezio and Leonardo share a bed for two and a half weeks. It's a strange time- Ezio feels like a virgin again, learning things about his body he never even suspected. It's absolutely strange, but not quite as bad as Ezio expected. Except that while he's learning about himself, Ezio learns about Leonardo, too.

He learns that Leonardo is in love with him.

The revelation comes to him all in a rush one night, while he lies next to Leonardo on the bed, trying to figure out… everything. His life is suddenly upside down, and he's not exactly sure how to get it back under control. It's not just Leonardo, although that's part of it of course. For some reason, Ezio has been a woman for nearly three weeks now, longer than he ever has before. It's… concerning, to say the least.

But he's even more worried about Leonardo. There have been more than enough hints lately- lingering looks, certain words and phrases and comments, and suddenly it all falls into place and Ezio _knows _that Leonardo is in love with him. Which makes everything suddenly so much worse, because Ezio has never even thought about his friend in that way. The past two weeks have been all about experimentation for him, trying to find out what his body can do. He'd thought Leonardo was interested in the biology of it all, but now he realizes how _stupid _he's been. There's no way this isn't going to end in pain.

And he's right. Ezio can't bring himself to explain why he has to leave, so he just slips out before Leonardo wakes up the next morning. It's cowardly and he hates himself for it, and altogether he's in an absolutely horrible mood for the rest of the day. The guilt of leaving sits heavily on his stomach, and Ezio spends most of the morning fight off wave after wave of nausea.

It's not fun.

Time passes. Ezio continues to avoid Leonardo like the plague. He also continues to be a woman, which after a few months starts to really worry him. He's _never _gone that long without changing, never. He sort of starts to worry that he'll be stuck like that forever. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but he really misses being a man. No matter how long he spends as a woman, that body just feels unnatural.

More so every day, actually, and eventually Claudia convinces him to go to a doctor.

"I don't think they'll be able to do much," Ezio protests. "There just aren't people like me."

"You said you haven't been feeling good," Claudia says, half forcing him out the door. "It doesn't have to be related to your…" she waves a hand vaguely at her brother. "Other problems."

"But-"

"Come on," she insists. "You probably should have been months ago, honestly."

But Ezio doesn't come on. Instead he stops and stares at her in absolute confusion. "You sound like you know what's wrong with me already."

"Maybe," she says, and pushes him again. This time, Ezio allows himself to be pushed, and soon enough they're talking to a man who looks at the pair of them with an expression of completely uninterested. He asks a few questions, pokes around a little, and then looks up at Ezio.

"You're pregnant."

Ezio gapes at the man in utter confusion, his mind momentarily wiped blank by the complete impossibility of that. "What?"

"With child," the man says. "I'm sure you know what I'm talking about."

"I don't-"

Claudia thanks the man, passes him a few coins, and manages to drag Ezio away. Once they're on the street, Ezio manages to get his head back together enough to start protesting. "This is a joke, isn't it?" he demands. "You-"

"Ezio." She gives him a look. "Why would anyone joke about something like this?"

"Because it's impossible!"

"Why?" she asks. "You are a woman. You've been a woman for several months now, which as you've pointed out yourself is longer than ever before."

"But-"

"Maybe you can't change back because you're pregnant. Where would the baby go if you were a man?" She hesitates, then adds. "Unless of course you mean it's impossible because you haven't been with a man."

_Leonardo_. Ezio feels his face go red and then very quickly white. It's been three months since he left in the middle of the night without a word of goodbye and now- if Claudia is right, he's going to have to go back and explain that he's going to have the man's child. Suddenly, Ezio realizes he's shaking uncontrollably, because this isn't a situation he's imagined in his wildest dreams.

"What do I do?" he asks. "I can't have a baby."

Claudia sighs, her expression softening a little. "It's not necessarily a bad thing," she says. "Haven't you ever wanted a child?"

"Maybe," Ezio says. He's never really thought about it before. "But I don't want to give birth to it."

"Neither do a lot of women," Claudia says. "Do you know how many mothers would kill to see their husbands have their turn?"

"But I don't _want_-"

"Ezio!" And now Claudia looks angry, her eyes narrowed, glaring at him in a way that tells Ezio he should probably shut up and listen. "You are not special. I know you're not a woman all the time, or even most of the time. But when you are, you're just like the rest of us. You're just as capable of making stupid decisions, and you're just as responsible for living with the consequences." Ezio opens his mouth to say something (although he's not quite sure what), but his sister isn't ready to listen, and talks right over him. "You fucked up," she tells him. "You did, and now you're going to have a baby. It's too late to change what already happened, so all you can do is decide what happens next."

Ezio hangs his head, suddenly ashamed. Of his decision, of his body, of his reaction. He can't argue with any of what Claudia just said- there is a child growing inside him, and there's nothing he can do to change that. Later, he will have to sit down and decide how he feels, but for now he has a more pressing question.

"What do I tell the- the father?" his tongue trips over the word, because if Leonardo is the father, that makes Ezio the mother. Not only is he going to be a parent, he is going to be a _mother_.

"Do you know who it is?" Claudia asks. Ezio nods and she smiles a little, but just a little. "How about 'we're having a baby'?" she suggests. "It doesn't have to be a bad thing. It might even end up making you happy."

-/-

Leonardo, to Ezio's complete surprise, isn't even mad at him for walking out. If anything, he seems slightly embarrassed. Before Ezio has a chance to explain why he's there, Leonardo is _apologizing_. "I've wanted…" he waves a hand vaguely, clearly at a loss for an appropriate word to describe their brief relationship. "_That _for a long time. But I never thought you would be interested, and then I found out you're also a woman, and I just…" he shrugs, determinedly not looking at Ezio. "I thought, well, it's not what I wanted, but if there's no other way for us to ever-"

He looks so miserable that Ezio takes pity on him, and interrupts before Leonardo can keep talking. "I'm sorry too," he says. "I thought we could just try it out, and then go back to how we used to be. When I realized it meant more to you, I… ran away."

"I shouldn't have tried to pretend we were something we're not." Leonardo smiles, but it definitely looks forced. "It doesn't matter. We can just… move on from here. Pretend it never happened."

Ezio shakes his head. "No," he says. "We can't."

"Why-"

"I'm pregnant."

Leonardo has an extremely expressive face, and Ezio watches it pass through shock, horror, confusion, and disbelief before finally settling on awe. "We… made a baby?"

Ezio nods, not quite sure how to interpret the man's tone. "We did," he says. "I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but-"

"Why would a baby be bad?" Leonardo asks. He's smiling like a loon, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Ezio! We made a tiny little person. That's incredible."

"I…" Ezio frowns, because he can't share Leonardo's optimism. Not when he's the one that's going to have to give birth to this child, not when he feels completely unprepared for the next few months, and even less prepared for the years after that. He's an assassin- his life is dangerous, all of the time. It's not a good place for a kid to grow up, and with Leonardo still under the eye of the Borgia, his life isn't much more stable. And on top of that-

"You don't want it," Leonardo says, suddenly drooping a little.

"It's complicated," Ezio mutters.

"Oh," Leonardo says, and drops into a chair, not too close to Ezio and not too far away. "I guess it is." He takes a deep breath. "What are you going to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"Are you going to keep the baby?" Leonardo asks.

"Of course," Ezio says, frowning. He's seen the dark rooms and dirty alleys where desperate women go when they have no other choice. Killing an unborn child isn't an exact science, and can be just as dangerous to the mother as the baby. Ezio has absolutely no intention of going there. But what he will do is a little less certain.

"I need to go," Ezio says, as the silence in the room gets worse.

Leonardo nods, and stands up to see Ezio out. At the door, he hesitates and then says, "Give it some time, Ezio. I promise this isn't a bad thing."

-/-

Ezio has a lot of time to think over the next few months, because the more time passes, the less he's able to move around the way he's used to. And the more he thinks, the more he starts to think that Leonardo is right. Whatever happens with this baby isn't going to be normal. But abnormal and bad are two different things, and somewhere around the six month mark, Ezio realizes he does want this.

Coming to that realization is sort of like waking up from a long nightmare, or having a huge weight lifted from his shoulders. Ezio spends the next month feeling happier than he has since the day his father died. This is gaining family instead of losing it, and Ezio realizes he already loves the baby, realizes it almost before he knows why.

For three days, Ezio walks around in a state of almost delirious happiness, until finally Claudia walks in on him whistling and almost falls over from laughing so hard. After that, Ezio keeps his excitement better hidden.

That doesn't mean it's not there, though, and Ezio's forced semi confinement only makes things worse. If he had work to do to distract him, maybe it would be different, but he can barely leave the hideout without falling over himself. His center of balance changes on an almost daily basis, and whatever his training as an assassin, right now he's six months pregnant and not exactly in shape to go wandering the streets on his own. He knows he won't be able to keep the baby safe forever, but at least he can for now.

Just about the only time he ventures out is to visit Leonardo. At first it's still awkward and uncomfortable to spend any time together, but once they stop trying to force themselves into roles they don't belong in, it gets easier. When they stop pretending to be lovers and remember how to be friends (friends who happen to share responsibility for a child) everything is better.

And then…

Everything goes wrong.

Of course it does, because this is his life and he's not allowed any kind of happiness. He should have seen it coming but he doesn't, and that only makes it worse. It starts out innocently enough- aches and pains and cramps that quickly turn into a fever. For three days and three nights, Ezio is trapped in a sweaty haze of nightmares. They seem so real that most of the time Ezio can't tell what's real and what's only happening in his head. Sometimes he hallucinates, too- one night he wakes up to see a shimmering, humanoid figure sitting at his bedside. It's sort of hard to tell, because the person is hardly more solid than a patch of light, but it looks as unhappy as Ezio feels. Its bowed head and slumped shoulders manage to convey a posture of absolute misery without having a real body.

Ezio stares at him or her or it for a solid half an hour before the fever calls him back to the land of hazy nightmares.

Then, on the fourth morning, the fever breaks. Ezio wakes up feeling almost as well as before the fever hit him. He's not sick anymore, but there's something wrong with him, something he can't exactly put his finger on.

To his surprise, Leonardo is there, sitting on a chair in the corner and looking like he's recently been crying. Crying. "What's the matter?" Ezio asks, and his voice comes out hoarse and rough, grating through a dry throat. Still, three days with a fever- a sore throat isn't exactly unexpected.

Leonardo opens and shuts his mouth several times, then shakes his head and laughs in a way that sounds like he's about to start crying again.

"Seriously," Ezio says, struggling into a sitting position on the bed. "What's-"

And then he stops, because he knows what's wrong. He didn't recognize it at first, because it's been so long, but he's been a woman for half a year by now, and anyway he's still groggy from the fever. But he knows now.

"You changed," Leonardo says, in a voice that's flat and completely unlike his normal tone. "While you were sick. Your sister said your body was looking for a more familiar form."

Ezio nods. It had happened all the time when he was sick as a kid but now- "What about the baby?" he asks.

Leonardo shrugs. "We won't know until you change back," he says. "But…"

He doesn't finish his sentence, and Ezio is glad because he doesn't think he'd be able to stand hearing that their child is more than likely dead.

More than a week later, Ezio changes back into a woman. Immediately he starts cramping, and everything feels absolutely wrong, in a way that's fundamentally different from anything he's felt before. The fever is long gone by now but he suddenly feels lightheaded. The whole world is fuzzy and full of a pain that goes deeper than any physical wound. There's blood everywhere and people around him and someone's shouting instructions that Ezio does his best to follow. And then, a long time later, it ends.

Someone comes into the room, and Ezio squints through tired, bleary eyes to recognize his sister. His body shudders and changes and at least now, as a man, some of the pain is gone. Only some, though. Ezio's pretty sure that some of it will never go away. "What was that?" he asks.

"Miscarriage," Claudia says, and Ezio flinches like the word is a physical blow. "As soon as you switched back to being a woman, you- do you remember?"

"Sort of," Ezio says, and then closes his eyes because he doesn't want to cry. Not now. "It's kind of a blur."

"Premature labor," Claudia says. "The babies weren't big enough."

"Babies," Ezio says. "Plural?"

"Twins," Claudia says. "A boy and a girl."

Ezio feels his mouth twist into something that might have been a smile, only he's never felt more miserable than he does now. Not since his father was hanged, anyway. "How fitting," he says.

"The boy was stillborn," Claudia goes on.

"And the girl?"

Ezio suddenly feels something small and warm being pushed into his arms and opens his eyes, startled. There's something- someone- impossibly small and fragile there, and Ezio can't bring himself to look away from her.

"She won't last long," Claudia says quietly. "She's too small. It was too early."

"No," Ezio says, and Claudia puts her hand on his shoulder.

"Leonardo was here earlier," she says. "But he said he couldn't bring himself to stay."

Ezio can't blame him for that, but he can't agree with it either. For the next half hour he sits in bed with his daughter in his arms, talking to her because he knows she'll be gone soon. And then it will be too late, she'll never hear his voice again.

And he'll never hear hers. Or her brother's. He won't get to see them grow up, or learn to walk, or fall in love. He'll never really know either of them. "What's her name?" he asks Claudia.

"That's up to you."

"Leonardo didn't pick one?"

"I told you," Claudia said. "He didn't stay."

So Ezio decides on a name on his own, and he whispers it into his daughter's ear, something secret that no one but the two of them will ever know. He whispers her brother's name too, on the off chance that there is an afterlife, so she can tell him when they meet again. Ezio has never been too sure about any of that, but right now he really hopes it's true.

He doesn't let go of the infant until she takes her last, shuddering breath, and goes completely still. When the body starts to go cold he tightens his grip for a moment. _"Requiescat in pace."_

Then he lets her go, and feels a part of himself dying along with her.

-/-

He tells anyone that asks that he's leaving Italia to go in search for Altair's library, and Leonardo is the only one that seems to realize he's lying through his teeth. Of course he does- who else would understand the burning need to leave, to be someplace that isn't just a constant reminder of everything he's lost. But not even Leonardo tries to stop him, and so Ezio leaves.

His wanderings take him across the world (or Europe, anyway), to Masyaf and then onward again. He keeps himself intentionally busy- he wakes every morning at dawn, and spends his hours running from one side of Constantinople to the other, until he's ragged and exhausted. Then he falls into bed sometime past midnight, and sleeps so deeply he doesn't even dream.

Of course, none of this goes unnoticed, but Ezio has never met any of the assassins here before. So while they give each other worried looks and whisper behind his back, no one actually says anything to him. And that's good, because Ezio knows that if he stops moving, he'll fall apart. Because the truth is, what happened with Leonardo is completely his fault.

If he hadn't been born with- with whatever sickness or curse or _whatever _it is that's wrong with him, everything would have been different. He would never have slept with Leonardo in the first place, would never have been able to conceive, would never have carried children for seven months.

Would never have had a son who never even lived, or watched a daughter die in his arms.

Ezio has never really _liked _the way his body switches between being a man and a woman. It's a hassle and vaguely uncomfortable. He knows there's something wrong with him, but until now, Ezio has never actually hated himself.

And now he can't stand to be in his own skin.

So he buries himself in assassin business, embroiling himself in the affairs of the city, and chasing down the keys to Altair's library in whatever spare time he has. Not that he cares if he ever gets it open or not. He's finding it extremely difficult to care about anything these days. But he keeps going, because stopping would be worse. He takes bigger risks, makes stupid decisions, because he just… doesn't care anymore.

Until he finds the first key.

Something amazing happens, because when Ezio takes the time to sit down and really study the thing, it shows him something. He would have called it a vision, except that vision only implies sight, and this is so much more. What the key shows him encompasses all of his senses, pulling him in and wrapping him in the… memory… until Ezio feels like he's really there.

He's living through another man's _memory_, and Ezio barely has time to react to the sheer impossibility of that before he gets an even bigger shock. Because as the memory unfolds, Ezio realizes something about Altair he'd never even imagined.

The man is a woman.

He's like Ezio, changing back and forth between man and woman with apparently no control over his own body. And more than that, from what Ezio sees, Altair doesn't even care. His wife knows, and doesn't care. His children know too, and so does his friend (Malik- not a name Ezio knows, but clearly someone important to Altair).

Altair manages himself in a way that makes Ezio almost jealous. He doesn't seem to care at all, not even when he changes genders in front of an entire crowd of assassins. Of course, Altair's figure is smaller than Ezio, and his robes would make it difficult for anyone to realize anything was wrong. Still, Ezio would have felt annoyed or angry or something- Altair only blinks and shakes his head, then goes on with what he's doing like nothing's happened. He's almost jealous, but not quite, because there are too many other emotions crowding his mind at that moment for there to be any room left to be jealous.

When the memory ends, Ezio sits back in his chair and laughs until his throat hurts. _This_. This is what he's been hoping for his entire life. Finding someone who's like him is… it's… amazing. For the first time in his entire life, Ezio allows himself to believe there's nothing wrong with him. That maybe he deserves to be happy, even if he is a little bit weird.

After that, things are better. Not everything, obviously. He still gets a cold, dead feeling in his gut whenever he thinks about his dead children, like someone's stabbed him in the stomach. There's no way he's moving past that, not ever.

But at least he can learn to live again, just a little. He even manages to fall in love, with a woman who seems to love him back. Sophia is beautiful and clever and happy in a way Ezio can't ever remember being. He doesn't tell her everything, of course- even when he explains the assassins and their beliefs, he keeps his own illness out of the story. The last time he told someone- it hadn't ended well.

Then he goes back to Masyaf. This time, Ezio has all the keys he needs to unlock the library under the keep. And there, he finds one more key, filled with one last memory- Altair's death. Ezio stands in silence, watching respectfully as the greatest mentor the assassins have ever known goes to his death. And then- just when it looks like the old man has breathed his last- someone else appears.

The specter steps out of thin air to stand right in front of Altair. He or she or it- Ezio can't even guess- is barely even recognizable as human, just a shimmering light in the air in front of him. The figure kneels down in front of Altair, and reaches out for his hand.

_"I'm sorry," _he says, and Ezio takes a step back, his eyes going wide. He doesn't exactly hear the words, but the meaning pops into his mind with no explanation. _"It's all my fault."_

Ezio might have thought he was going crazy, except that Altair seems to hear the silent words as well. His eyes go wide, and he sucks in a wheezing, rattling gasp of surprise. Then his whole face seems to soften, and he even smiles a little. He seems to have suddenly understood something. "It's alright," he says, and his words are the normal, spoken out loud kind. "I forgive you."

Those are his last words. Ezio watches as he stops breathing, and his eyes dim. He spares a moment of silence in honor of his passing, then steps back, expecting the memory to end. And it does- now that Altair is dead, there's no one to keep the memory going, and Ezio finds himself back in his own time.

Only- the thing (the ghost, specter, whatever it is) from so many centuries ago is still there. It's turned to look at Ezio now, and Ezio can almost feel sadness and regret coming off him in waves.

"I've seen you before," he says. "When I was… sick. With that fever." The thing nods, a barely perceptible shimmer in the air.

_"I'm sorry," _it says, and Ezio narrows his eyes.

"You said that already," he says, gesturing toward the long dead body of Altair. "To him."

The thing ignores him. _"What happened to him- what happened to both of you- it's my fault. If I hadn't- if I weren't-" _and here it stops, apparently unable or unwilling to go on. But when Ezio looks at it- really looks- he can see something there, and he feels his face go pale as an impossible understanding rushes into his mind.

The knowledge is almost unbelievable, but Ezio finds himself believing it anyway. "It was you," he says. "This whole curse- it's your fault."

_"I never had a choice," _it says, and Ezio can feel the pain in its silent voice. _"I know what you've been through. You didn't deserve it."_

"No," Ezio says. "I didn't. But…" he hesitates. For a very long time, he says nothing, just thinks of everything he's gone through in his life, and of the obvious regret the thing shows in his voice, and of Altair's last words. So Ezio swallows down his anger, and echoes the ancient assassin. "I forgive you."

And more importantly, he forgives himself. Because after everything he's seen today, he can't lie anymore. And the truth is, there's nothing he can do to bring his children back to life. They are gone, and he will never get to see them.

But there is a woman waiting outside the keep who loves him, and maybe it's not too late to have a happy life. Ezio nods to himself, determined and suddenly unashamed. He nearly runs back to Sophia, feeling light and happy for the first time in decades. "Sophia," he says, sliding from a run to a dead stop, barely two feet in front of her. "I have something important to tell you."


	3. Chapter 3: Haytham

At first, Haytham assumes it's seasickness.

He wakes up in the middle of the night, opening his eyes to complete darkness and the ceaseless rocking of the _Providence _as she cuts through the Atlantic on her way to the colonies. There's something… off at that moment, and Haytham doesn't much like the way it makes him feel. Sort of sick to the stomach and off balance. This isn't his first time traveling by ship, and Haytham's never felt ill on any of those other journeys, but this trip is easily the longest. Maybe that's why he suddenly feels-

The ship lurches abruptly under his feet, and Haytham has to throw out an arm and brace himself against the side of the ship. For a long while he just stays there, feeling uncomfortable and out of place in his own skin. The dizziness passes quickly, but the overwhelming feeling of wrongness doesn't fade. If anything, it gets stronger, and Haytham scowls into the blackness. He hates illness, hates the hassle and inconvenience of it all.

He straightens, shoving himself upright and groping around on the floor for his boots. Maybe some fresh air on the deck will help. Obviously it's not doing him any good to stand here like an idiot, just waiting for something to happen. So, grumbling to himself under his breath, Haytham snatches up his boots and slumps onto his bunk to pull them on.

And that's when he realizes that whatever's wrong with him is worse than he'd assumed, because his boots don't fit.

It's such a tiny detail that Haytham almost surprises himself by noticing it at all, but notice it he does. There's too much empty space in there, like his feet have suddenly shrunk. Haytham frowns and kicks one boot off, pulling his foot onto the bed next to him. It's still much too dark to see anything, so he just runs his hand over his toes and up toward his ankle, ignoring how strange this would look if anyone else were there to see.

His foot feels small. His hands feel small, for that matter, and Haytham wonders, briefly and absurdly, if he's managed to shrink. Then he shakes his head, annoyed at his own fanciful thought. Absentmindedly, he crosses his arms and sighs. Of course he hasn't managed to shrink, that's absolutely ridiculous. That's impossible, that's-

That's not what happened, because…

Haytham stops moving, nearly stops _breathing, _all of his energy suddenly focusing on something unexpected. Where his arms are crossed over his chest, he can feel that there is something very different there, something that hadn't been there when he fell asleep. He pinches himself, just to make sure he's not _still_ sleeping. Because he doesn't- men _can't have_.

But they're there, and he's still awake, and so Haytham is forced to the conclusion that as impossible as it seems, he is now a woman.

That will take some getting used to, but it does explain everything strange about the night so far. The sickness could be some aftereffect of the change, and the uncharacteristic lack of coordination is from the abrupt adjustment as well. Even his suddenly smaller feet make sense now. Women tend to have smaller feet than men. It's only logical.

"I should be upset about this," he says aloud. Normally he doesn't talk to himself (that's for insane people, and those in love with the sound of their own voices), but in this case he's more interested in hearing if his voice is any different. It is, incidentally- higher than normal but not exactly feminine, with a rough note that might have more to do with surprise than anything else.

And anyway, the words are completely true. He feels vaguely surprised and extremely confused, but he's not at all upset. Now that the dizziness has passed, he doesn't feel any pain or discomfort at all. It doesn't matter. So long as he can keep working, it doesn't matter if he's man, woman, or child. There's no family waiting for him, no wife or children to be upset or afraid. Not even parents to ask awkward questions. There's a sister (somewhere), but he hasn't seen her in years and has no idea where she is, anyway.

Haytham spends the rest of the night learning what he can about the body he's in now. It's difficult, given the small space, but he manages anyway. He goes over every inch of skin, making a mental map of what has changed and what is still the same. Right about the time he's done with that, he feels something like a wave of cold water running down his spine. Haytham shudders, and looks down at himself. It's morning now, or dawn, anyway, and light enough that Haytham can see for himself that he's a man again.

Oddly enough, he doesn't feel anything but a flicker of irritation at the pointlessness of it all. Why bother changing into a woman overnight? If he hadn't just happened to wake up, he might never have known (has he done this in his sleep before tonight? There's no way to tell). And for that matter, why had he done it at all?

"Pointless," Haytham scoffs, and busies himself getting dressed.

But it's not entirely pointless, because over the next few weeks and months, Haytham ends up spending nearly as much time as a woman as a man. At first it's always accidental, but Haytham quickly gets tired of being at the whims of his body. His life doesn't change that much, except that some situations actually end up easier as a woman. Information gathering, specifically, sometimes goes better when he's in a skirt, and therefore deemed less important by the standards of society.

Of course, as long as his transformations are unpredictable, he can't rely on them. So Haytham teaches himself to control them. It takes some effort, and more than a few embarrassing accidents, but finally he learns to make the transformations happen on his schedule, and not their own. It's not exactly perfect- he can't hold off a transformation indefinitely, and if he fights it for too long, it gets uncomfortable. It's a little like eating a large meal and feeling too full after. But changing frequently helps stop that from happening. Usually. Of course there are times when he has no choice at all in the matter, but overall things are better.

-/-

Until they get worse.

Because there are still times when the change comes over him so suddenly and with such force that Haytham honestly can't fight it off. And- of course- they seem to come through at the worst possible moments. Always. Maybe it's related somehow to stress, or maybe it's just Haytham's abysmally bad luck.

Of course, the worst possible time for Haytham to become a woman is when he is _with_ a woman, and he knows this perfectly well. For a while, this isn't even an issue. Haytham is so wrapped up in his duties as a templar grandmaster that he doesn't even have time to think of women, much less meet any. But then…

Then there's Ziio. They meet while Haytham is working, but even with that distraction he can't help noticing. She's different than anyone he's ever met- a truly obnoxious cliché, but one that describes his situation so perfectly that he can't help but use it. She frowns the way some women smile, easily and frequently, and in a way that makes him feel like she means them just for him.

And she sees him, really sees him, the way most people don't. Haytham is fairly sure she doesn't like what she sees, but maybe she'll change her mind. Maybe. And when the opportunity comes for the two of them to work together again, Haytham counts himself lucky. Luckier than usual, which is how he knows for a fact that at some point while he's with her, _he will become a woman._

So when it comes over him, just outside the tavern where he's recently managed to get into a stupid fight with a gaggle of idiots who can't seem to figure out when to back down. Ziio is frowning again- of course she is- and chiding him for causing unnecessary problems. But Haytham is barely listening, and eventually she notices. Crosses her arms. Asks him- "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Are you ill?"

"I'm-" he should have come up with something, an escape strategy, or maybe a lie that can explain all this (is there even a lie that can explain all this?). But he has nothing, and Ziio is clearly not going to let this go. Haytham waits as long as he can, until he's shaking and cold and stuffed full of the need to transform.

And then he lets it go, lets himself relax into the form it wants to be in at that moment. He doesn't even blink as it happens, looking right at her instead. For a second her face stays blank and uncomprehending. Haytham wonders if she's even noticed- it is dark out, and he knows from hours of observation and experimentation that he doesn't look all that different as a woman than as a man. Slightly smaller, with features that are a little softer, but that's all.

Then her eyes narrow, and without another word she turns on her heel and marches off.

"Ziio!" Haytham yells, and his voice sounds higher than it should. Even as a woman his voice is lower than this, and he recognizes panic there. He doesn't want her to leave. "Don't-"

But it's too late. She's nothing but a distant figure in the distance by the time Haytham manages to force out the rest of the words. "Don't go," he says quietly.

But of course she does, and Haytham doesn't know why he even feels surprised.

It's weeks later when she drops back into his life. Literally drops. Haytham is barely aware of somebody following him before she comes down from a treetop and lands right in front of him. She looks unhappy and uncertain, twisting his hands together in an uncharacteristically fidgety way. Haytham doesn't say a word, because his tongue is tied up in uncertain knots as he tries to decide if he should go for apologies or explanations or just _why are you here?_

Ziio doesn't look any more eager to speak, and for a little while they stand there in silence. Haytham is very aware of the space between them, and of the angry looks they keep getting from people walking past. Finally, Ziio jerks her head toward a nearby building, an inn. "Do you want to have this conversation here, or inside?" she asks.

Haytham has absolutely no doubt that she will do this on the street if he doesn't say anything, so he nods. Inside, once they've placated the hovering woman who refuses to leave until they've paid for something to eat, Haytham looks over at Ziio. "So?"

She scowls at him, clearly unimpressed. "You turn into a woman right in front of me, and that's all you have to say."

"Yes," Haytham says. "I don't know what to say until you tell me what you're thinking."

"No," Ziio says. "You don't get to know what I'm thinking. Not after that."

"Fair enough," Haytham says. "So why did you come back?"

Ziio grumbles something under her breath and doesn't look at him. "I kept thinking about you," she says.

"You did?"

"Not… _you_," Ziio says quickly. "With whatever's wrong with you."

"Of course," Haytham says, managing not to smile through a legitimate effort of will. "If you want, I can explain. Or tell you what I know, anyway. I don't understand most of it myself."

She nods at once, still frowning, and Haytham wonders how badly she must want to know if she's agreeing this quickly. "Fine," she says. "Explain."

-/-

She doesn't leave again, and in fact they spend quite a lot of time together over the next few months. Mostly just talking, and occasionally working together, but sometimes…

Haytham hasn't spent a lot of time in bed with women before this, but after a little time with Ziio he can consider himself… well practiced. It's a strange feeling, to know that she wants to spend time with him, and after a little while he starts to wonder if this could actually work out. After the first, understandable shock, after Ziio leaves and comes back, she doesn't mention that she wants to go away again.

But they don't talk about the future much either, which is fine at first. And then Haytham realizes that they're actually long overdue for a serious conversation, because Ziio is pregnant. She's not even showing yet when he figures it out, but he's hesitant to bring it up. Finally, when it becomes obvious that she's not planning to tell him, Haytham corners her.

"You're having a baby," he says flatly.

Ziio frowns and doesn't bother to deny it. "How did you know?"

"You-" Haytham bites his lip and looks away, finally giving a long sigh. This is honestly the real reason he's waited so long to ask. "You should have had your bleeding last week," he admits grudgingly. They've spent so much time together that their cycles are matched up. Fairly impressive, honestly, since Haytham goes out of his way to make sure he's a man for as much time as possible during those weeks. Still, there had been a few days during the last week when there had been no other choice, and Ziio had definitely not been bleeding during that time.

"Ah." She actually smiles at him, and Haytham wonders vaguely how emotional pregnancy has made her, because he has never once seen her smile before. "I should have known I couldn't hide it from you. Yes, I am having a baby and yes, the baby is yours."

"Oh," Haytham says. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you're a woman sometimes," Ziio says. "I don't know if that's going to pass onto the child. I was…" she doesn't say _scared_, but the way she drops her eyes to the ground tells him everything he needs to know.

"Why would it work like that?" Haytham asks.

"How do you know it won't?" Ziio demands.

"Because…"

She nods to herself as Haytham trails off. There's no possible way he can know that for certain. Maybe the baby will be fine, but maybe it will be born cursed. And while Haytham has no problem with his own transformations, it's not something he would ever wish on a child. After all, he'd been a full grown man when he first became a woman. He'd already known why who he was, and the physicality appearance of his body isn't going to change any of that.

A child wouldn't have that sense of identity. They would grow up confused and alone, knowing they were different from their peers but not knowing why. It would not be- could not be- a kind life. He can almost understand why Ziio hasn't wanted to tell him she's pregnant. "Sorry," he says, not quite looking at her. She shrugs and goes back to ignoring him.

That's not exactly unusual- most of their time together is spent in silence. But this isn't the comfortable kind of silence they've shared until now. It's an aggressive, prickling quiet that's more exhausting than it should be.

Maybe, if Haytham had said something that night, things would have ended differently. They might not have ended at all. But no one says anything, and the silence grows and grows. Over the next few weeks, they rarely speak without snapping at each other. Then they start fighting, and Haytham realizes he's messed up. But it's too late by then to do anything about it, and when he wakes up one morning to find Ziio has left without a word, he's not even surprised.

-/-

After that, Haytham throws himself into his work. For several months, Haytham does an extremely thorough job of weeding every reminder of Ziio out of his life. When he thinks of her at all, it's to marvel at how someone so important could drop out of his life that quickly.

And then one day- at least two years after Ziio leaves- Haytham wakes with an intense desire to see his child. It's been a hard, lonely couple of years, and maybe that's the reason for his unexpected need. Maybe it's the awakening of some dormant maternal instinct- he does happen to be a woman on that particular day.

Whatever the reason behind them, Haytham can't argue with the feelings themselves. That afternoon, Haytham saddles his horse and rides out of the city.

He rides for a while, and during that ride Haytham starts to have doubts. It's been years (and maybe it says something about him as a person that he can't say exactly how long it's been) since he last saw Ziio. She probably won't want to see him- he doubts she even thinks of him anymore. And what if the child had been born with Haytham's curse, as Ziio had been afraid? Or if it hadn't survived to be born at all, or died since? Birth and the first few years of childhood are incredibly dangerous, with high risk of illness or accident.

Haytham comes to a stop as soon as he starts to see signs that he's coming close to the village. He's feeling hesitant and uncertain, which in turn makes him angry and annoyed. This isn't normal for him- why should he be suddenly second guessing himself like this?

(Because this is important, some part of his mind whispers, and you can't mass this up again)

And then, while Haytham is still making up his mind on what to do next, he hears something. In the distance, a gaggle of children run down a hill, laughing and pushing at one another. The youngest of them looks barely old enough to walk, while the oldest is probably fifteen or sixteen.

Haytham narrows his eyes and checks them over in eagle vision. He's half afraid he'll find what he's looking for, but mostly afraid that he won't. He looks anyway, and sees at once the golden glow that tells him which child is the one he's looking for. "Oh," he says, very quietly.

"Haytham?"

He turns around quickly, already half convinced he knows who will be standing there when he looks. "Ziio," he says, pretending he's calm.

"What are you doing here?"

"I…"

"You came to see him," Ziio says.

"Him," Haytham says. "Just… him?"

She frowns at him, that same frown he used to know so well. He's missed it. And her, although he knows he'll never admit it to her. "He's never turned into a girl, if that's what you're asking."

"What else would I be asking?" Haytham asks, baffled.

Ziio gives him a look that might have been insulting if it had come from anyone else. Coming from her, it only makes Haytham smile. Not right at her- he's not that foolish- but when she looks away, he smiles anyway. "Only you would think that's normal," she says.

"I'm not saying it's normal," Haytham says. "I just-"

She holds up a hand before he can say anything else. "I don't want to fight," she says.

"Neither do I."

"So you need to leave," Ziio says. "Now." Haytham blinks, opens his mouth, and then closes it again when nothing occur to him. She crosses her arms over her chest almost defensively and glares. "I left you for a reason," she says. "We don't get along."

"I know," Haytham says, although he has to force the words out. "But I didn't come here to see you."

Ziio studies him silently for several seconds. Then she turns and calls something in her own language- Haytham doesn't understand any of it, but the kids at the other end of the valley look up at her, and one of them comes running over. Haytham watches him come gradually closer, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and absentmindedly changing from woman to man. He wants to be a man the first time he meets his son.

The kid comes to an uncertain stop a few feet away from them, then takes a hesitant couple of steps toward his mother. While Ziio bends toward him, apparently explaining something (none of it's in English so Haytham doesn't understand a single word), Haytham takes the opportunity to study the boy.

He's… remarkably average looking. A little taller than Haytham would have expected given his age, with dark hair that falls in front of his eyes. He pushes the hair away from his face and glances sideways at his father- it's hard to tell exactly what he's feeling. His mother nudges him and he remembers to smile.

"You have a week," Ziio says. "And then you leave."

-/-

The week goes too quickly. The child (Haytham eventually learns his name is Ratonhnhaké:ton, although he never figures out how to say it without sounding like a fool) takes a while to get used to him. He's not exactly unfriendly- if anything, he just seems shy. For the first couple of days, he does nothing but watch Haytham, with an intimidating intensity that Haytham isn't used to seeing from anyone. He can't shake the feeling that he's being judged somehow, like everything he does is being remembered to be held against him at some later point. Then, for no apparent reason Haytham can see, Ratonhnhaké:ton apparently decides that he's passed whatever he's using to keep score in his head.

After that, he's a lot more talkative. He's still young, and not proficient in English, so he's still a little quieter than most kids would be. But he talks, and Haytham listens, and he gets to know his son. There's one definitely awkward moment when Haytham realizes he'll have to spend at least some time as a women. It's near the end of the week, and he would normally have given in and changed a long time ago. His body has been telling him for a while now that it's time- he's having intermittent cramps, coupled with an extremely annoying itch on every limb.

Finally it comes to a point where Haytham feels that the body he's in is nothing but an awkward covering for what (who) he is supposed to be. He gets clumsy, stumbling and off balance when he walks, and constantly knocking into things when he moves.

Ziio watches his struggles with an impassiveness that's harder to take than any anger would have been. This feels like a challenge (and it's not, Haytham knows it's not, but he's stubborn by nature and takes it as such), so Haytham grits his teeth and hangs on. But finally no amount of self-control or willpower is enough to keep him from changing.

In some ways it's an admission of defeat, and that morning Haytham waits with some trepidation for his son to wake, to see him, to _notice. _But Ratonhnhaké:ton either doesn't see or doesn't care. He acts no differently than he had the night before, to Haytham's extreme confusion.

Haytham looks at Ziio, who shrugs. "I always thought it was fairly obvious," she says.

"What?" Ratonhnhaké:ton looks between his mother and father, head cocked to one side.

"Nothing," Ziio says, and the conversation moves on normally from there.

Sometime later in the day, Haytham finds himself alone with his son. The boy is more restless than usual, running and climbing and falling over himself for the sheer, bloody minded joy of the experience. Haytham watches him play, mildly alarmed but not sure if he should interfere. But the boy seems not at all alarmed at his fresh cuts and bruises, so Haytham leans against a nearby tree and simply watches.

His mind drifts back in time, to his own childhood, He can't remember ever being that carefree. What he remembers of his early years is marked by lessons and solitude and general calm. It hadn't been an unhappy time, just different. Haytham is just drifting back to the present when Ratonhnhaké:ton turns around.

Something about the boy's face and the sheer joy of freedom Haytham sees there, reminds him of his father. The two of them look absolutely nothing alike, of course, but in that moment his expression and his eyes (excited and as full of passion as a toddler can be) are a perfect echo of a dead man's, and it hits Haytham like a punch to the gut.

He drops to one knee and gathers Ratonhnhaké:ton (who has stopped running around, for the moment at least) into his arms. The boy doesn't resist, just laughs and squirms a little.

"You are very like your grandfather," Haytham says, half in a whisper.

"Grandfather?" Ratonhnhaké:ton repeats. His face twists in confusion, reminding Haytham that English isn't his first language.

"Your father's father," Haytham says. "My father. Edward."

"Edward," Ratonhnhaké:ton says, slowly this time, like he's testing the name on his tongue, or committing it to memory. "I like that name."

"I like yours," Haytham says, and Ratonhnhaké:ton laughs.

"You can't even _say_ my name!"

Haytham actually laughs too, the sound escaping from him almost unwillingly. They spend the next hour or so in playful banter, Haytham giving more and more ridiculous attempts at pronunciation while Ratonhnhaké:ton descends into peals of uncontrollable, childish laughter. It's a perfect day, even down to the weather, and when Haytham leaves the village behind the next day, the memory goes with him. He couldn't leave it behind even if he'd wanted to.

-/-

Over the next few years, Haytham goes back to the village. More than once. More than he should have, if he's honest with himself. It's not just that he's going against Ziio's wishes and meeting with Ratonhnhaké:ton behind her back. He shouldn't be there at all because every time he has to leave it tears him apart.

Still, he makes sure to go a few times a year. He tries to tell himself that it doesn't mean anything. After all, he makes sure to never say anything to Ratonhnhaké:ton, just watch unseen from the distance. For the first few years it's hard to keep hidden, but over time he manages to convince himself his son must have forgotten him. After all, the boy had barely been old enough to control his own bladder the one time they actually met. Children forget.

Haytham doesn't. He keeps coming back, just to reassure himself that everything's fine, until the one day that it isn't. It's supposed to be a good trip- Haytham is the grandmaster of the templars, but that doesn't mean he can just sneak off whenever he wants without telling anyone. So, with most of his colleagues out of the city (he doesn't know where they're going, and is too preoccupied with the rare chance to visit his son without getting peppered with questions) Haytham heads off the first chance he gets.

The smell of smoke interrupts his train of thought a little way out from the village, and he just feels the entire bottom drop out of his stomach. "No-"

But it's on fire. The whole village, and for one terrifying moment the whole world seems to blur and spin around him. _This can't be real_. But it is. It's real, and for nearly an hour Haytham stares in stunned silence at the burned shell of his family's home.

He could be ten years old again, staring at the house his father had been killed in and his sister kidnapped from. That house had burned too, and that family had been lost…

(Only, were Ziio and Ratonhnhaké:ton really family? He'd never done much for them, hadn't been there when it really counted)

He might have stood there for hours, except a very small sound somewhere in the distance makes him blink and turn around. Someone is crying. Haytham sighs and heads toward the sound- the whole area is so covered in ash that he doesn't have a hope of seeing any survivors without eagle vision. But when Haytham switches away from his normal sight and looks around, he sees a glimmer of gold that's almost cruel in the way it makes him feel so full of hope.

Sure enough, when he finds the crying child not far away, it's Ratonhnhaké:ton. Haytham recognizes him instantly, even though it's been at least six months since he's been by, and even though he is-"

Haytham curses with an intensity that he never would have used around his son in normal circumstances. But today has been a difficult day, and finding out that his son has finally inherited his curse is not helping anything at all. Still, Ratonhnhaké:ton has to be feeling even worse, so Haytham crouches down next to him, not sure what to say but positive he has to say something.

Ratonhnhaké:ton sees him and practically hurls himself backward, trembling and terrified. He shakes his head, babbling something in a mix of his own language and English. Even the English parts are so garbled that Haytham can only catch a word or two.

"Calm down," he says, knowing how futile the words have to sound at the moment. "Everything will be fine."

"No-"

"It will," Haytham says. He wants to shout it, to _make _the boy listen, but that would have been the worst possible thing to do. "I promise, it will."

"My mother won't keep back," Ratonhnhaké:ton chokes out, through the tears he seems utterly unable to stop. "And I'm a _girl_-" (this in a tone of complete disbelief) "And there were bad men here…" he trails off, holding himself tightly and sniffling and allowing Haytham to hold him when he gives it a tentative try. "I don't want to be here," Ratonhnhaké:ton whispers. "I want to wake up yesterday and find out everything was a dream."

"That's not going to happen," Haytham says.

Ratonhnhaké:ton nods miserably to himself. "I'm all by myself," he whispers.

"Not if you come back with me," Haytham says. With Ziio dead, Haytham is the only parent Ratonhnhaké:ton has left. For a second, the idea of it all- of having a family again- is overpowering, and so close he can almost taste it. But then-"

"No!"

The boy twists away from him, horrified and panicking again. "No, I don't wanna go anywhere with you!"

"Listen-"

"I don't even know you!"

And as much as Haytham wants to argue with him, he can't. Because it's true, and already he can hear the distant calls and voices of other survivors of the fire (of course there are others, these people have been through worse than a little bit of flame), and they're coming closer. They'll be there soon, and they won't want to see him there. Ratonhnhaké:ton had mentioned 'bad men' earlier, and Haytham assumes that means white men. He doesn't want to be blamed for a fire he has no responsibility for.

This time, when he turns and leaves the village, it's worse than ever before. It's not just that he feels like he's being torn apart- he's used to that, as melodramatic and foolish as it sounds. This feels more like he's left behind every part of himself that matters, and nothing will ever be the same after this.


	4. Chapter 4: Connor

Ratonhnhaké:ton can remember, distantly, a time before he was a girl.

Those had been good days. His mother had still been alive in those days, and he had been happy. He'd also been a stupid kid, with no idea what the future held. He remembers days spent with friends, some of whom had died on the day of the fire, and with his mother. He's absolutely positive he'd been a boy all the time in those years, but Ratonhnhaké:ton has never been able understand how the two are connected. Maybe it was just the stress of everything else that had happened at the time.

Whatever the reason, the fact is that Ratonhnhaké:ton hasn't gone more than a day in over ten years without switching from one gender to the other. It's an unbelievable hassle, one that leaves him constantly on edge and just waiting for it to happen again. It's not something he actually thinks about consciously- it's just an eternal, nagging worry that robs him of sleep and keeps people away.

But today is different, because today Ratonhnhaké:ton is actually taking the time to sit down and think his situation over. This is the first time he's ever really had to think about his curse in a larger context than just how it affects him- today is the day he's leaving his home behind for the first time, and that means facing an entire world that knows nothing about him or his… changes. Ratonhnhaké:ton has no idea when (or if) he'll be back. That part's easy to deal with, though- he's already gotten pretty used to the idea of being away from home. He's even excited to see the world for himself, to fight against the injustice of what's happening to his people.

But for the first time, Ratonhnhaké:ton is really worried about his changes. It's no longer just a hassle for him, personally. It's also a curse that could lead to him being branded a demon or a witch by the superstitious. Ratonhnhaké:ton has been warned to keep his female side a secret, unless he wants to be run out of town or killed.

So he makes plans.

He is thirteen years old, and his body is changing on him. More than it usually does. His female half is just finishing a growth spurt his male part has yet to catch up to. Both bodies are going through changes that Ratonhnhaké:ton doesn't really understand, but unevenly so that he's never really sure where he'll be on any given day. The changes to his body (bodies) and the constant changes _between _bodies is enough to drive him half insane. If there was something he could do about it…. Any of it…

But there isn't. And to move on from here, Ratonhnhaké:ton knows he will have to change again. Except this time, he'll be changing not just his body but himself, lying to everyone he ever meets and keeping impossible secrets. It's not fair and he hates it with every fiber of his being, but he knows there's no other choice. From here on out, he'll have to hide the existence of his female side (although how he's supposed to do that, when puberty is pulling the two parts of him in opposite directions, is a mystery).

But just making the decision is helpful, and Ratonhnhaké:ton feels himself stand up a little straighter when he nods to himself and moves onward again. He'll manage, somehow. He has no choice, anyway. At that moment, Ratonhnhaké:ton swears to himself that he'll lie to the whole world if he has to. That no one will ever find out, ever.

-/-

Achilles sees through him almost at once.

Within twenty four hours of the old man letting Ratonhnhaké:ton through his front door, he's eyeing his new charge with narrowed eyes and demanding to know what's wrong with him. It's not the best way to start, and Ratonhnhaké:ton is wary of revealing too much. But Achilles is relentless, and eventually Ratonhnhaké:ton decides he would rather explain than get kicked out of the house. Not after all the work it took just to be allowed inside.

So he explains in terse, clipped words that sometimes he is a woman, that there's nothing he can do about who he is or what his body does (without his permission), and if he could stop he would but he can't. Then he waits, expression carefully blank, for Achilles to judge him. He's half expecting an instant denial, either anger or disbelief. There are arguments already on his tongue when Achilles shrugs and changes the subject. "If you're going to be staying here for a while, you're going to need an English name."

"Wait," Ratonhnhaké:ton says. "You don't care?"

"It's not exactly unprecedented," Achilles says. He not only sounds indifferent but also unimpressed. In some weird way, that makes Ratonhnhaké:ton a little annoyed. About the only thing this curse is good for is the extreme range of reactions he gets from people.

"You know other people like me?" he asks.

"Not personally," Achilles says. "But you're not the first assassin in history to be both a man and a woman."

"I'm not." He means it as a question, but he's so surprised it comes out as a flat statement instead.

Achilles nods anyway, and elaborates. "It's fairly common knowledge within the order that Ezio Auditore-"

"Who?"

"An Italian from a couple centuries back," Achilles says, waving the interruption away. "He was mentor at the time, and arguably one of the best men we've ever had. He never let being a woman stop him."

"He was…"

"And recently- over the last couple hundred years- there have been rumors of others, too, even earlier than Ezio."

"But no one still alive today?" Ratonhnhaké:ton asks, just a hint of wistfulness in his tone.

"No," Achilles says. And maybe Ratonhnhaké:ton is imagining it, but for a second the old man's face softens. "Not that I know of."

"Oh."

"It doesn't matter, anyway," the man says, and changes the subject again. "Now what name should you have?"

"I like mine," Ratonhnhaké:ton says stiffly.

"No," Achilles says. "Your… transformations will make it difficult enough for you to blend into normal society. An unpronounceable name won't help you at all."

"Ratonhnhaké:ton," Ratonhnhaké:ton says. "It's not unpronounceable."

But Achilles is looking at him with an expression that makes it clear he has no intention of backing down from this, and Ratonhnhaké:ton sighs. "Fine," he says. "But I don't know any English names."

(Except that's not true- some long buried memory is worming its way to the front of his mind, and Ratonhnhaké:ton frowns because the name is just on the tip of his tongue- then it comes to him)

"Connor," Achilles says.

"Edward," Ratonhnhaké:ton murmurs, still trying to remember the rest of the scene from the memory. But it's no good. He can remember hearing the name… _somewhere_, a very long time ago, but he doesn't remember who told him or where they were at the time, or anything.

"Alright," Achilles says, and so Ratonhnhaké:ton's English name comes to be Connor Edward Kenway. The middle name gets dropped a lot, but Ratonhnhaké:ton- Connor- doesn't much mind. For some reason the name seems important, and he's glad he gets to keep it.

-/-

The next few years are difficult, but Connor isn't the kind of person who gives up easily. Every fresh challenge makes him more determined to push past it and succeed. And that's good, because there's no end to the challenges he's presented with. As if hiding his constantly shifting (once a day on average) gender isn't enough, Connor learns to put up with racist attitudes and a culture he does not understand. He can live with all of that. He can even use it as motivation to push past it and do better than anyone expects.

Except there's only so far that can take him, and sometimes it's just exhausting.

Then comes the assassination of Benjamin Church. It doesn't start out badly- Connor hears about some suspicious activities in an abandoned church nearby, and duly goes to look it over. When he gets there though, the church is less deserted than it should have been. Connor is halfway through the door when he stops abruptly, eyes fixed on the woman in the middle of the nearly empty room.

It's a strange sight- a middle aged woman dressed in practical trousers and wearing men's boots- most likely a concession to the snow on the ground and the uneven terrain of the area. She looks up at once, turning around to face him with a knife in her hand, eyes narrowed. There's something so eerily familiar about her face that Connor doesn't even recognize the templar markings on her clothes and weaponry.

Connor is shifting into a defensive stance when the woman blinks and actually drops her weapon in apparent surprise. She doesn't draw another, and actually falls into a relaxed stance. "What are you doing here?" she asks.

"Who are you?" Connor demands. There's something about this entire situation that just seems off somehow, and it rubs him the wrong way that he just can't put his finger on what it is.

She gives him a look that makes Connor feel like a very small child asking a very obvious question, and her whole body seems to shiver for a moment before shifting, and suddenly Connor is looking at a man. Definitely a man, and not a particularly girlish one either.

His first thought, oddly enough, is- _So that's what it looks like from the outside_. And then- _Oh no_, because he recognizes that face. There's a painting of him in Achille's basement.

"I'm-"

"My father," Connor says, interrupting him because he would rather say the words than be forced to hear them.

"So you do remember me," Haytham says, and for some reason he sounds surprised.

"I've seen your picture," Connor growls. "What are you doing here?"

Haytham opens his mouth, then shuts it again with a snap, shaking his head to discredit whatever he'd been about to say. "I'm here for the same reason you are, I expect," he says instead. "To hunt down Benjamin Church."

"One of your own men?" Connor asks. "I doubt it."

"Is it so hard to believe he could have betrayed us?" Haytham asks. Again, he manages to convey the impression that Connor is a foolish child. Except this time, he does it through judicious use of eyebrows. His voice sounds bitter and betrayed, and Connor takes a tiny victory from that.

"No," Connor says, reluctantly. Something about the coldness in Haytham's tone when he says Church's name makes it impossible to doubt him. "Why are you a woman?"

"You should know as well as I do," Haytham says dismissively. He bends down to retrieve his dropped knife and Connor tenses, expecting an attack- but his father only slides the knife into a sheathe.

"What makes you say that?"

"You're the same as I am," Haytham says, with no apparent concern. "Sometimes a woman and sometimes a man."

"There's no way you can know that."

His father's knowing smile makes Connor want to punch him. It's so smug that it almost seems like a physical blow. And that, of course, is when his stomach tenses up, his skin gets cold and clammy, and-

Connor curses under his breath as his body swaps from man to woman. The change isn't as bad as it used to be now that puberty is over and both his bodies are back to looking more or less the same. But it's still humiliating, and Connor hates his body at that moment for changing on him with his father right there.

"Hmm," Haytham says. "You're not a very attractive woman, are you?" and his body shivers again into a woman's. He takes a step toward Connor, studying his face and touching his own in an obvious comparison. "Not much family resemblance."

And suddenly it strikes Connor that there's something different about the way his father's transformations work. The timing is too perfect to be accidental. "You did that on purpose," he says.

"Of course," Haytham says.

"How?"

Normally he wouldn't have asked the question, but- well, Connor is completely done with living his life at the whim of some function of his body he doesn't even understand. And for whatever reason, Haytham doesn't seem like an enemy right now. He doesn't even have a weapon drawn, and if Connor had wanted to kill him right then he could have. Easily.

"It's easy," Haytham says dismissively. "Just a matter of self-discipline." He coughs and doesn't quite look at Connor. "I could show you."

Connor almost laughs aloud at the offer. After all, he's standing in the middle of an abandoned church, a woman, with his father, also a woman, who happens to be a templar. And he's just offered Connor help.

"Why would you do that?" he asks.

"Why not?" Haytham asks. Then, before the silence can get uncomfortable, Connor sticks out his hand.

"Connor Edward Kenway," he says, stiffly.

"That's your name?"

"Not the one I was born with, if that's what you mean," Connor says. "But it's one most people can pronounce."

"Fair enough," Haytham says. Then, almost too casually, "Edward?"

"I heard the name somewhere," Connor says. "Why?"

"No reason," Haytham says. "No reason at all."

-/-

So they meet again. And again and again and again. Sometimes Haytham gives Connor instructions on how better to balance his time between being a man and a woman. Mostly Haytham just lectures while Connor sits in silence and tries to pretend that he's not desperate for exactly this information. Sometimes he asks questions, too- there are hundreds of things he's always wondered about, but with no women around in his life, this is his first opportunity to ask.

And sometimes they actually work together. As impossible as it seems to Connor, their interests really are aligned in hunting Church down. It's an interesting experience, working together, but the longer it goes, the less terrible it seems. Sometimes Connor even catches himself feeling happy they're having this time together. Then Haytham will say something Connor can't even wrap his mind around, something so indicative of his templar loyalties it makes Connor want to take a swing at him.

He never does, though, and he's not exactly sure why. His father is a strange man (and woman), and not really the kind of person Connor would normally want to spend time with. He's judgmental, distant, and often aggravating. His opinions are so completely opposed to Connor's that he sometimes thinks it must be some big cosmic joke- they're opposites in everything from their outlook on life to taste in food.

So it honestly confuses him that he keeps going back to his father. Every time they part he swears to himself that this is the last time. But it never is, because every time they make plans to meet again, he shows up. Promise or no promise. And he can lie to himself for a while that it's just because he needs Haytham. As far as he knows, there is literally no one else on the planet that can teach him to control his curse. And they are still chasing Church, after all, and it makes more sense to work together than against each other.

Most of the time, anyway. There are some points during the chase when Connor wholeheartedly regrets agreeing to work with his father to do anything. For example, the day they trace him to a brewery in Boston, guarded by men Connor can only assume are templars.

"They're your men, aren't you?" Connor asks. "Can't you get us past them?"

"Me, yes," Haytham says. He's staring at the brewery with an expression of intense concentration on his face. "Not you."

"You're not going in there alone," Connor says. "I don't trust you."

Haytham snorts, but doesn't seem insulted. "Alright then," he says. "But you're not going to like my next plan."

"I don't like any of your plans," Connor says, which is not quite true. Right now though- sitting in the darkness on a roof across the street in the middle of the night, not sure what he's walking into but half convinced it's a templar plot- all he can remember are the bad plans. "What's this one?"

"Quite frankly, there's only one reason to bring a woman into an empty brewery," Haytham says.

"What?"

Haytham sighs. "You are a woman today, in case you've forgotten."

"I know," Connor says. "I meant what's the reason you would take a woman into an empty brewery?"

Haytham suddenly coughs and his whole face goes red. "Has anyone spoken to you about… reproduction?"

"What?"

"Sex."

"Oh!" Connor feels his own face turn red as well. "You're going to tell them- I mean, that we're-"

"I'm not going to say anything," Haytham snaps. "Trust me, they'll draw the conclusion on their own."

"But why-"

"Connor!" Haytham snaps. "I don't like it much either, but either you go with that story or you stay out here while I go after Church."

Connor genuinely considers both of these options, and also thinks about just turning around and leaving. This is the worst thing he's ever had to do, but he _does _have to do it. In the end, he just doesn't trust his father enough to let him out of his sight. "Fine," he manages to say, hissing the word out through clenched teeth. "What do I need to do?"

"Nothing," Haytham says. "Just stand there and try not to look so…" he gestures at Connor, then sighs. "You look like something just died in your boot."

"I'm not exactly happy about this," Connor says. "Honestly- are you just doing this to bother me?"

"Of course not," Haytham says. "I've done this before myself."

"You've pretended to-"

"There are a great many places in this world that a street woman can pass through without being noticed. You should remember that."

"Wonderful advice," Connor says. "Exactly the kind of life lesson I always hoped to learn from my father."

Haytham snorts. "If all I ever teach you is that pretending to be a prostitute is a good way to gather information, at least I've taught you something." And with these oddly half-inspiring words, Haytham turns away. "Come on. We're never going to do this if you're in assassin's robes."

-/-

When they finally get to the brewery doors, the guards don't do much more than leer at the pair of them. "Tasting of the forest fruits?" one of them asks, and Connor very nearly stabs him right there.

-/-

It would have been nice if they grew apart after that. It could have ended gradually, leaving some of the good memories untarnished. But the night at the brewery doesn't cause a real hitch in their relationship, after the initial awkwardness, and they keep working together until after Church is finally gone. That night, Haytham pulls Connor aside.

"We need to talk."

"About what?" They're on the _Aquila, _headed back to Boston, and he's actually feeling pretty good right now.

"This is the last time we work together."

"Of course," Connor says. He keeps his gaze focused on the sea in front of him, trying to pretend this conversation isn't important. "Church is dead. I have some control over my body." Not as much as he wants, but more. "There's no point in seeing each other again."

"Connor-" Haytham hesitates, and for a second Connor thinks his father is going to say something more, and he's half interested in finding out what that's going to be. Insults, maybe, or- something else.

But he only gives Connor a half pay on the shoulder, drawing away quickly when Connor flinches away. The night suddenly seems colder and darker, emptier than it had mere moments ago.

"We can't," Haytham says, utterly unaware that Connor is trying to ignore him. "We're on opposite sides of a war that has been fought for hundreds of years. This will not end well."

"It doesn't matter," Connor says. "I don't want to see you again after this."

Haytham snorts, sounding mostly amused. "You are such a child."

Something about that- either the tone or the words themselves- is the last straw. Connor spins around and charges at his father, a wordless sound of rage tearing from his throat before he can pull them back. Between one blink and the next, he's managed to pin Haytham against the rail of the ship. His tomahawk goes to his father's throat and Connor realizes he's panting in a ragged way he barely recognizes.

"No," he says. "I am not a child. I am not a fool, as you seem to think me. I am a grown man and can handle my own affairs without your interference."

"Which is why you're having this wonderful fit of overreaction at the moment," Haytham snaps.

"The only thing I've ever gotten from you is a curse. I don't want it, and it makes every day of my life much harder than it needs to be. Every morning, I wake up and have to check what gender I am, because I have a habit of changing when I'm asleep. _Every single morning_. You say I'm a child, but what I am is incredibly frustrated."

"I did try to help, you know," Haytham says. He almost seems apologetic, but Connor isn't ready to hear that from him. Even if his transformations have been more under control lately.

"It doesn't matter," he says and steps back, taking his weapon with him. "My point is that you have no right to judge any part of me. You never wanted anything to do with me until our interests happened to align in hunting down Church, and now that he's dead you're leaving. I don't want to hear your opinions on me. I don't care what you think. As soon as we dock, I want you to leave and not come back."

It would have been a good speech, maybe. Except that as badly as Connor wants to believe his own words, there's something in the back of his mind that just won't let him. He's never as disappointed as he is in the moment that Haytham nods and turns around, vanishing belowdecks without another word.

He's an annoyance, a hassle, and disagrees with everything Connor stands for. But he's also the only one that's ever been able to understand what happens with Connor's transformations, and working with him hasn't been as terrible as it might have been.

Not a ringing endorsement, exactly, but it's something.

-/-

They meet again, much later, and again they fight. But this isn't the same as before, with words and threats and insults. This time they're not father and son, but templar and assassin. And that means neither of them can afford to back down.

Connor walks into that fight knowing that he won't walk back out unless he kills his father first. Haytham is well past his prime, and he's standing in the way of something Connor needs. And for a while, it looks like the fight will play out exactly like that- they fight, and while both of them are injured, in the end it's Connor that gets the upper hand on Haytham. The world is falling apart around them, and for a second Connor really thinks he's going to kill his father. And then-

_He remembers the night of the fire, remembers it in a way he hasn't been able to in years. Not just scattered bits and pieces- Lee's sneering face inches from his own, his mother's final words, the smell of smoke and fire he's never really forgotten. Something about this moment brings the whole thing back to him, and he remembers the day with a detached criticalness he isn't used to. He remembers the little moments, and he remembers-_

_The first time. Up until then, Connor had spent his whole life as a boy, and the sudden transformation had shocked him, threatened to break him in ways that might never have been repaired. He'd cried like the child he was, and there had been someone there, promising that everything would turn out alright, and that somehow this wasn't the end of the world…_

"It was you," Connor says, backing away in pure surprise. "You were there." And Haytham is too busy coughing up blood and panting for breath to hear him or say anything. "You-" Connor shakes his head, trying to ignore the way it makes the whole world spin. Or maybe that's just the revelation that his father had been there when he was a child. On the day his mother died, at the very least, and probably more often. Now that he's thinking about it, there are other memories, hazy and distant but very definitely present.

This changes everything. It shouldn't, because this isn't about them. This is about assassins and templars, not family. But Haytham had been there, when Connor has always assumed he didn't care enough to even acknowledge his son's existence. Knowing he'd been there- _he'd been there_- it changes what he thought he knew about everything.

"Come on," Connor mutters, and heaves his father to his feet. The man spits out a glob of red and manages a few words.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Of course it would be something judgmental. "Don't complain," Connor mutters. He doesn't know what he's doing. "Just… come with me."

And that's how his father comes to stay with him. It's awkward, and they never come right out and talk about what Connor remembered in the moments just before he was about to kill Haytham. Connor's not sure he could have explained it, anyway. But they do talk about nearly everything else, because during the next few months they are both confined to bed while their injuries heal.

And they come to an agreement.

They will always be an assassin and a templar- that's not likely to change any time soon. But their situation is also a little unusual. Not just because they're father and son, but because they're also mother and daughter. There's no one else like them. Not in this century anyway (and Connor is weirdly triumphant when he finds out Haytham hadn't known about Ezio or Altair). So they have to keep in contact. It just makes sense.

For them, anyway. It's weird, but it works.

-/-

Connor is burying a medallion when he sees… it.

Which, alright, is a strange thing to be doing, especially since the place he's burying it is an old gravesite. But his life is strange, and for some reason the spirit from his village is convinced that it's important. So he'd asked his father for the damn thing, and after a lengthy argument, Haytham had admitted he didn't much need it anymore. He'd had it for decades by this point, and was no closer to figuring out what it's for.

"Happy birthday," he'd told Connor when he handed it over.

"It's not my birthday," Connor had said.

"I've certainly missed enough of them," Haytham said, with obvious reluctance. "So here, have…" he glanced uncertainly at the medallion in Connor's palm. "Whatever this is."

"Thanks," Connor said. "I guess."

And now- since he'd been told to keep it hidden, he's burying it in a place he doubts anyone will ever look. He's about three feet down when he sees it. Him. Her. Them. It looks like a ghost, a half visible person that has absolutely no distinguishing features. He can't even tell if it's a man or a woman, of how old it is.

"You don't have to bury it so deep," the thing says when it realizes it's caught Connor's attention.

"Who are you?"

"I'm, ah-" the thing makes a movement with one transparent hand, running it through invisible hair. "Really tired. That's all." It's voice sounds oddly distorted, like it's speaking from the other side of a very long tunnel, but Connor thinks it sounds defeated somehow, too.

"That's not an answer," he says.

"Doesn't matter," the thing says, and lapses back into silence. Connor stares at it, trying to figure out what this thing is, why it's here, what it's talking about. But there's no way to make sense of this, so Connor just keeps staring, leaning almost absentmindedly against his shovel. The thing doesn't even seem to notice- it's difficult to really tell what it's doing, given that it's barely visible as a faint shimmer in the air, but it seems to be completely lost in thought.

"Why are you here?" Connor asks.

His words seem to rouse the thing out of its preoccupation. It stirs a little and looks over at Connor. "I don't really know," it says. "Usually I only get to see people when they're about to die, but you seem fine." It gives a dry laugh. "But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to live much longer, so… maybe that's why." Connor's about to say something, but the thing isn't done yet. "I really admire you, you know?"

"What?"

"Sure," it says. "I mean, when you first got- what do you call it, a curse?"

Connor nods, a little dazed because he has no idea where this is going.

"I thought you were going to lose it," the thing says. "But you're definitely still sane. Like, at least 90%. Maybe 95."

"Thanks," Connor mutters. "I think. How did you know about that anyway?"

"It's kind of my fault," the thing says. "So- sorry about that."

"You- how did you-"

"If I knew how it worked, I wouldn't have done it, I swear."

"Well that's reassuring," Connor mutters. A thought suddenly occurs to him. "Why did you tell me not to dig so deep?"

The thing has already started to fade when its final words reach him. "Because I'm the one that's going to have to dig it up."

And then it's gone, leaving Connor alone and staring at a patch of empty grass next to a hole in the ground. "Wait," he says, even though he knows there's no point. "I don't understand."

**-/-**

**Apologies for the fact that I just _cannot _write Connor today. **


	5. Chapter 5: Desmond

Desmond wakes to a world where absolutely nothing makes sense.

A world where Desmond isn't _Desmond_, but a man named Altair who lived nine hundred years ago. And every part of this world is different from the one Desmond knows, filled with languages that sound like so much meaningless noise- to a monolingual American, half mad with terror, there's no way they would sound like anything else.

And the world through Altair's eyes is different- his mind is like a laser beam, tightly focused on whatever his goal is at that moment in time. And Altair's mind is pouring into Desmond's, twisting it until Desmond wants to scream with the pain of suddenly _being someone else_. Then the world is dissolving and the press of Altair's mind is fading and Desmond sits straight up, breathing with the ragged intensity of someone that's just run a marathon.

For a few seconds, nothing seems real and Desmond is one hundred percent focused on bringing the world back into focus. It's such a relief not to be trapped in someone else's mind that it takes longer than it should have to realize this there's someone else in the room.

Two someones, actually- a middle aged man with a scowl so intense it seems to invite a punch to the face, and a younger woman who shoots Desmond a quick, nervous smile before going back to her conversation. Or argument, really- Desmond can't hear exactly what the two of them are talking about, but the low volume of their voices can't completely hide the antagonistic quality of the conversation.

Finally, the man says something terse and gestures at Desmond before stalking angrily from the room. The woman makes an aggravated noise and, after taking a second to visibly calm herself, smiles. "Sorry," she says. "I'm Lucy."

"Desmond."

"I know," she says, and Desmond frowns.

"Where is this place?"

And it's this answer to this question that changes Desmond's life forever, because everything Lucy has to say is insane. She starts with the word _animus_ and everything goes downhill from there. By the end of it, Desmond is gaping at her in a way that would have been embarrassing in any other circumstances.

"So you want me to-"

"Get back in the animus and go through your ancestor's memories, yes," Lucy says, and she at least has the decency to look guilty.

"No way," Desmond says. "Absolutely not."

"Unfortunately, you don't have a choice," Lucy says. "I'm sorry, but you are a prisoner here, and trust me- Vidic will not hesitate to put you in a coma if he thinks you're not being cooperative enough."

"But-"

"Anyway," Lucy says, pushing past the whole prisoner thing as if it's no big deal and Desmond shouldn't be upset about it. "I'm sorry, but I need to give you a physical."

"No."

"Trust me," Lucy says. "It'll go much more smoothly if I'm the one doing the examination."

"No way," Desmond says, backing away even as she moves toward the animus table. She stops, a look of genuine confusion on her face.

"What's wrong?" she asks. "You don't have some kind of horrible scar you don't want me to see, do you?"

"No, that's not- look, why do I need a physical? I'm your prisoner, right? You're not supposed to care about my health-"

She interrupts the babbling when it starts to get out of hand. "It's not that," she says. "It's just that you aren't synching as well with Altair as you should be, even given that this was your first session. It's either a mental block or a physical one, and since you weren't conscious when we put you in, it's probably nothing mental."

"Physical?" Desmond asks. "What?"

"There are a lot of factors that impact how well a subject can synch with their ancestor," she says. "For example, putting you in unconscious was supposed to ease the transition during your first session. Clearly that didn't work-"

Understatement, Desmond thinks.

"So I need to find out why your mind rejected your ancestor's. The easiest answer is that there's something physically different between the two of you, and so your mind refuses to synch with Altair. Hence the examination. Now will you please just stop being so stubborn and let me take a look at you?"

Desmond thinks about arguing further, and then slumps. In all honesty, there's not much point in hiding anymore. Nine years of lying to everyone, just on the off chance that someone will come looking, but they've figured it out anyway and it can't possibly get worse from here, so there's no point in keeping secrets.

"Don't bother."

"What? Desmond, I keep telling you that you don't have a choice-"

"No," Desmond interrupts. "I mean, I already know what went wrong."

"You what?"

"Well, he's a guy," Desmond says. "And I'm… not."

Lucy just stares, so Desmond sighs and pulls off her hoodie. Underneath, she's wearing a loose T-shirt that makes the curve of her body more immediately obvious.

"Oh," Lucy says. "That… would explain the animus."

"Yea," Desmond mutters. "Um- I guess."

"I- I don't understand," Lucy says. "You're pretending to be a man? Or you're not trans, are you? I don't want to be insensitive or anything."

It strikes Desmond as funny that she would be worried about insensitivity when she's literally Desmond's warden, and almost manages to laugh. "No," she says. "When I ran away from my parents, I was sixteen. I had no money and I was all on my own, and it didn't take me a long time to figure out that a teenage boy had a much better chances of surviving than a teenage girl did. And then eventually it just turned into an easy way to hide- my parents were still looking for me, and I thought this would help throw them off the trail."

"And it worked?" Lucy asks, absolutely stunned.

"For the past nine years," Desmond says. "Until today."

"How?"

"It's not as hard as it seems," Desmond says. "I just started wearing men's clothes, cut my hair, pitched my voice a little lower, and got a job in a place where everyone's drunk all the time."

"But your name-"

"It's just one I made up," Desmond says. "I needed one and it sounded good."

"So what's your real name?"

But Desmond has suddenly remembered that this isn't the best time to be spilling deep dark secrets- it's understandable, of course. She's been keeping a secret from literally everyone since she was sixteen years old, and she wants to explain. She wants someone to understand.

But Lucy isn't the right person, and this isn't the right place, so Desmond sits in stubborn silence until Lucy gives up. "Fine," she says. "I don't need to know if you don't want to tell me."

"I don't," Desmond says. She crosses her arms over her chest and tries not to feel overly defensive. Honestly she feels naked without her hoodie, more exposed than she's used to.

"Well, now that I know what's wrong, I can mess with the animus and try to compensate," Lucy says. "You'll be back in by this afternoon."

"Oh," Desmond says, suddenly realizing this plan has slightly misfired.

"Yea," Lucy says. "Sorry."

The room goes quiet, and for a while the only noise is Lucy's quick, efficient typing at the animus terminal. Every so often she glances up at Desmond, opens her mouth as if to say something, then shakes her head and looks back down at her work. After about half an hour the old man (Vidic, according to Lucy) comes back in. He shares a few quick, words with Lucy, then scowls over at Desmond. She scowls back, and takes a vicious kind of pleasure in watching his double take when he actually looks at her.

But it's a brief satisfaction, and before long Desmond is back in the animus, trapped in Altair's head for a second time.

-/-

For a while, it seems like whatever Lucy's done to the animus is going to work. The memories come more clearly, and with less effort. It still feels strange, being someone else. There are still stumbling blocks, and it takes Desmond longer than it should have to get used to living in a man's body, despite- or maybe because- she's been pretending to be one for so long. Every so often, Desmond just gets a creeping, shuddering feeling of wrongness, and her synch rate will drop until Vidic pulls her out just to yell and make threats.

And then one night, she has a dream.

It's not the first time Desmond has dreamed of Altair since her kidnapping- if anything, it would be a surprise if she went an entire night without a nightmare. She's dreamed of Altair's life in surprising detail, everything from the first few years of his life to his eventual old man years. But she's only done so in bits and pieces, disjointed scenes with no context, more full of feeling than fact.

This dream is different. Altair is different, and when she wakes up that morning (covered in swear and breathing like she's just run a marathon), it takes Desmond a lot longer than usual to get herself under control again. She takes a cold shower before Vidic can come in for his daily wake-up-and-leer session, and by the end of it she's mostly managed to convince herself that it must have been a product of her imagination.

It's absolutely not possible for Altair to turn into a woman.

So she shakes it off, and soon enough that dream is gone and forgotten. Except… the more time she spends in the animus, the more convinced she becomes that Altair is keeping a secret. Not from her, specifically- there's no way he could know she's watching him, after all. It seems more like Altair is keeping a secret from everyone around him.

And the next dream is just as bad as the first, and the third is even worse. By the end of the week, Desmond has reluctantly come to accept that- as impossible as it seems- her ancestor is sometimes a man and sometimes a woman. And she's sort of afraid that it might be her fault. When she casually brings it up to Lucy- asking if it's possible for him to affect his ancestor while he's in the animus without specifically bringing up why- she tells her it's not.

"But what if-"

"That's not how the animus works," Lucy says. "It's possible for Altair to affect you through something called the bleeding effect, but he's been dead for hundreds of years. Nothing you do can possibly change his life."

So Desmond doesn't bring it up again. But she keeps wondering, because it would have a kind of terrible poetry that's pretty much par for the course, given her usual luck. She gets kidnapped and forced to relive the memories of a man. A few days later, she has a dream about that same man turning into a woman. After that, her sessions in the animus get less difficult. She can synch much more easily with Altair as a woman than as a man, and the more she thinks about it, the more convinced she becomes. Altair was a woman because Desmond is a woman. It's the only possible explanation.

When Desmond finally gets to the end of Altair's memories, it's almost a relief. Given that she's been told over and over and over again that Abstergo will kill him when they no longer need her, it's hard to feel completely okay. But at least the guilt will be gone, and Desmond won't have to think about accidentally ruining his ancestor's life any longer.

And then Lucy comes to her in the middle of the night, announcing that they're going to leave, and for just a second it looks like Desmond is going to get the best of both worlds. She gets to live, and she won't have to spend any more time worrying about Altair. But then Lucy puts him back in the animus and then there's another ancestor- a kid named Ezio, and Desmond has no choice but to pray that whatever happened with Altair won't happen again.

-/-

Lucy is the one that finds her, skulking in a corner of the assassin's hideout, absolutely miserable and trying not to let it show on her face. "Hey," Lucy says.

"Hey," Desmond answers, but doesn't say anything else.

"You… didn't tell them," Lucy says, joining Desmond on the floor. "About- you know." And she gestures vaguely in his direction.

Desmond shrugs, doesn't quite look at her. She'd meant to tell Shaun and Rebecca when they were first introduced, but somehow it hadn't worked out. There had been other things to worry about, and certain assumptions had been made, and now it's too late.

"Is that why you're hiding?" Lucy asks.

"I'm not hiding," Desmond says. "And no." She's actually mostly grateful that Lucy is the only one here that knows. She's so used to hiding by now that it almost feels wrong to be a woman again.

She can feel Lucy's gaze on her, watching and judging. There's a question in her eyes, and Desmond can almost feel the accusation that Lucy doesn't actually say aloud. _You're afraid. _And so maybe she is- it's just been so long, and just telling Lucy had been bad enough- she can't face the idea of telling two more people right away.

"Are you ever going to tell them?" Lucy asks.

Desmond shrugs. "Maybe someday."

"It'll be easier the sooner you do it," Lucy says. "I can help, if you want."

For just a heartbeat, Desmond is tempted. She hesitates, and very nearly agrees. Lucy's offer of help is an unexpected kindness, and Desmond is tired of hiding all day, every day. It hadn't bothered her the entire time she was on her own, but since coming here she's felt nervous and uncomfortable about keeping her secret.

Then she remembers the reason she's sitting in a corner by herself in the first place. She remembers the dreams, and finding out that Ezio is a woman in the same way as Altair had been. And whatever Lucy says about the impossibility of Desmond affecting her ancestors, she's still convinced it's all her fault. She's ruining their lives, just because she happened to be born a woman. Now isn't the time to embrace her femininity- Desmond is half afraid that if she does that, Ezio will lose his manhood altogether. She doesn't want to be responsible for that.

"I can't," she tells Lucy.

"Why not?" Lucy demands.

And Desmond tells her. She already knows about Altair, of course, but doesn't exactly believe it. This time, Desmond doesn't leave a single detail out. But she only gets halfway through before Lucy's face takes on a pitying look that makes Desmond regret sharing.

"It sounds like the bleeding effect," Lucy says.

"It's real."

"No," Lucy says. "It's not- that's the whole _point_-"

Desmond ignores the desperate, almost pleading tone in her voice. _Don't go crazy_, she's telling her, and for some reason that pisses Desmond off. The brief hallucinations she's started to see in the corners of her eye- that's the bleeding effect. The dreams are different.

"What if I prove it to you?" she asks.

"You can't," Lucy insists. "It's not-"

"It's real!" Desmond shouts, loudly enough to make Lucy do a double take and actually start listening.

"Alright," she says. "If I see it happen in the animus, I'll believe you."

So Desmond walks straight over to the animus and shows her. She starts by going through Ezio's life, picking out memories she's dreamed of but never seen in the animus. They're mostly small scenes, the kind the animus doesn't bother with, and Desmond knows they probably won't be enough to completely convince Lucy. But then he gets to the memory of Paola's dramatic discovery of Ezio in her brothel, and Lucy changes her mind. She pulls Desmond out and just stares at her with wide, shocked eyes.

"You were right," she says. "You- I mean, _how_?"

"I don't know," Desmond says.

Lucy looks back down at the computer in front of her. "Ezio said he was born- um- like that." Her voice shakes a little, and she's obviously trying very hard to stay calm. "What about Altair?"

"He was older," Desmond says. "It happened sometime during the same time period as the memories I was looking at in Abstergo." Her stomach churns at the memory of Altair's complete shock, staring at his own hands with blank incomprehension. Coming from Altair, who up until then had been self-confident to a fault, it had been… awful.

"That fits your theory, I guess," Lucy says. "If your animus sessions caused this, and you started earlier with Ezio's memories than with Altair's, that would explain why he was a woman for longer."

They look at each other. They're messing with something they don't understand, and ruining lives in the process. "We should stop," Desmond says, knowing it's too late.

"We can't," Lucy says. "We don't have a choice."

-/-

Weeks later, Desmond dreams of Ezio's pregnancy and miscarriage. She wakes up sobbing, utterly lost in the memory of her ancestor's misery. She can feel Ezio's loss bleeding, _pouring_ into her, until the shock and pain of having children ripped away is too much. Even the room around her is making things worse, because _of course _this would have to happen at the Auditore villa, which is packed with memories of Ezio already.

Desmond can feel her mind trying to tear itself apart with the horror of it all. Ezio's grief and loss feeds off of and into Desmond's own guilt. Because this is her fault. If she hadn't gone into the animus, Ezio wouldn't have been a woman, he couldn't have conceived, he wouldn't have lost any more family.

Desmond hears footsteps coming toward her and draws back and away, into herself and out of the real world. She feels like her guilt and her crime are stamped onto her body for everyone to see. She presses against the wall and wraps her arms around her legs, burying her head between her chest and her knees. Desmond wishes she could just disappear- but the room (while dark) can't hide her completely.

The footsteps stop just in front of her. "Um…" It's Shaun's voice, hesitant and half afraid, probably because Desmond still can't calm down enough to stop crying. "Desmond? You alright?"

She shouts at him, grief momentarily transformed into rage, lashing out because she can and because it feels good. The words come out in Ezio's dated Italian, but Desmond can't make herself care. Shaun makes a run for it anyway, and that's exactly what she'd wanted.

But Desmond isn't allowed to be alone for very long. Lucy comes by next, sitting in patient silence until Desmond's ready to talk. It takes a long time, but eventually Desmond manages to explain what she'd seen in her dream. At the end, Lucy doesn't say a word, and Desmond is grateful for her silence. He doesn't want to be comforted or argued with or questioned.

They sit in silence until morning, and then Desmond finally stirs. "I'm sorry," she says.

"Who are you apologizing to?" Lucy asks, with a perceptiveness that's almost creepy. "Me, or Ezio?"

"You," Desmond says. "For reacting the way I did, and making you sit up all night." She stares into the distance, fidgeting a little. "But- I wish I could apologize to Ezio, too. And to Altair. Their lives got so fucked up and it's all my fault…"

"You couldn't have known," Lucy says. "And I know you would undo it if you could." She reaches for Desmond's hand and grabs it, squeezing reassuringly. She doesn't let go, either, not even when Desmond clings too tightly, desperately in need of something to anchor him to the now.

Lucy makes a good anchor.

In another world, she can imagine this going farther. If she had really been the man she's spent so long pretending to be… she can imagine her relationship with Lucy turning into something else. She might have loved this woman.

But not in this world. Here, Lucy is a friend, and nothing more. She's someone Desmond can trust and hold onto in a world that feels like it makes less sense with every day she spends in the animus. Lucy already knows Desmond's secrets, and her ancestor's for that matter. And that makes her different from everyone else Desmond has ever known.

"Are you ready to go back into the animus?" Lucy asks, after a while.

"No," Desmond mutters, standing up anyway. "But I don't have a choice, do I?" And it's sort of funny, how often she's been noticing that lately. Funny in a laugh until you cry way. She shakes her head and tries to think of something less depressing. "Is Shaun pissed at me?"

Lucy snorts. "Scared, more like," she says. "I have never seen a grown man run away from tears so fast."

So they walk together back to the animus, trying to pretend like nothing is wrong, when really... everything is.

"Hey, Desmond," Lucy says suddenly, catching Desmond by the elbow. "Don't give up, okay?"

"What?"

"You had us all worried," Lucy says. "Shaun came running over and told us you were dying-"

"I'm not dying," Desmond scoffs.

"Just crying like a loon in the middle of the night," Lucy says. "Seriously, Desmond- I know you're going through a lot right now, but…" she gives Desmond a surprisingly bright smile and claps her on the back. "Don't give up. Stay strong, okay?"

-/-

When Desmond stabs Lucy, the whole world ends.

Everything moves in slow motion, and that just makes it worse when Lucy's eyes come up to stare at her. Desmond can read every emotion in her face as easily as if the words had actually been written there.

_Why?_

_You killed me-_

_I trusted you and you killed me._

_whywhywhyWhyWHYWHYWHY-_

"It wasn't me," Desmond says. Or maybe she just thinks it, she can't even tell. "I didn't want to-"

Someone in the distance is laughing, and someone else is yelling, calling Desmond's name and Lucy's. The whole world shatters around her, and the next thing Desmond knows, she's falling. There's a blackness in the corners of her vision, creeping up to claim her.

But Lucy was the one that told her not to give up. It would be so easy to let the darkness in, to fall asleep and just… not wake up. Instead, Desmond grits her teeth and digs her fingers into her palm until the darkness fades a little. There's a lot of noise but most of it doesn't make any sense- someone grabs Desmond by the arm and pulls her to her feet. She recognizes Shaun and doesn't resist, even when he starts to run. She's tripping all over everything, stumbling and staggering like a drunk at three in the morning but she is moving.

And then they're back in the van and Rebecca's there, telling her not to sleep, but Desmond can't fight it anymore and she falls into a deep, dreamless sleep for the first time in weeks.

She wakes up hours later- its bright enough outside to be noon, and she's alone in the back of the van. Desmond actually feels _good _for a second, before remembering that Lucy is dead, and Desmond herself is the killer.

"I did that," she whispers. "I killed Lucy."

Dimly, she can remember someone in her mind, telling her what to do- she hadn't been able to resist, but still… even if it had been someone else controlling her, it had been Desmond's blade in Lucy's guts. That makes her responsible.

Desmond hops out of the truck and goes looking for something to distract herself. She has about half a second to take in an unremarkable parking lot at what looks like an airport before she catches sight of the three people standing only a few feet away. Two of them, unsurprisingly enough, are Rebecca and Shaun. But the other one is her father, and Desmond freezes at the sight. This day can't possibly be any worse.

Then Rebecca catches sight of her and Desmond watches her eyes get big. "Desmond!"

"Um-" she's too distracted by her father to really respond. "Hey."

William crosses his arms and glares at Desmond until she starts to fidget. "So," he says. "Imagine my surprise when I find out that I have a son."

Desmond frowns, and doesn't say anything. Something about all this is terrifyingly familiar, and she feels like she's sixteen years old and late for training again. "Yea," she says. "I bet you were… pretty surprised."

"Hang on," Shaun interrupts, gesturing between Desmond and her father. "You're not his son?"

"No."

"You've been lying to us the whole time!"

"Sort of," Desmond says. "Yes, I mean-"

"Why?" Shaun yells, and a tiny part of Desmond's mind wonders if he's really angry about the lying, or if he's upset about Lucy. Maybe a little of both.

"It wasn't on purpose, if that helps at all," Desmond says. "It's just kind of a habit…"

"Who are you, then?"

"She's my daughter," William says, and Shaun's face goes completely blank as he stares at Desmond.

"Daughter," he repeats. "So you're a-"

"All my life," Desmond says, and can't hide the guilty twinge when he thinks of his ancestors, stuck in eternal flip flopping limbo between one gender and the other.

"Why?" Rebecca asks. But Desmond doesn't answer, just looks at William and frowns. "Oh," Rebecca says quietly, and nods like she understands. Desmond briefly wonders what kind of relationship she must have with her own dad, to make her understand so quickly. But she doesn't say anything.

William isn't ready to let it go. "Why 'Desmond'?" he asks.

"Mom told me once that if she ever had a son that's the name she would have used," Desmond says. William's eyes soften a tiny bit, and he grunts. He doesn't even bother to bring the name up again.

"Hold on," Shaun says. "You're seriously a woman?"

"Keep up, Shaun," Rebecca says.

"But- I mean come on!" Shaun says. "Why didn't you tell any of us?"

"I did," Desmond mutters. "Lucy knew." The conversation instantly grinds to a halt, and Desmond can feel everyone's eyes on him. "I didn't want to," she says. "Something… made me. It was the apple."

"About that," Rebecca says nervously. "We only found out while you were asleep-"

"What?"

"She was a traitor," Rebecca says. "Working for the templars the entire time."

"Oh," Desmond says. Suddenly she feels overwhelmingly stupid, and the memory of all her conversations with Lucy go flashing through her mind. All the moments of sympathy, of kindness- they'd been a lie the entire time, and Desmond had trusted Lucy.

Trusted her.

"We need to get moving," William says.

"Where to?" Desmond asks.

"America," Rebecca says. "New York. There's a precursor temple we need to visit."

"And we're flying commercial?" Desmond asks, glancing around the airport parking lot. "Seriously?"

"It's not that bad," William says. "Rebecca and Shaun have never had direct dealings with Abstergo, so their faces are unknown. And they won't expect me to be in the country. I only flew in this morning."

"Alright," Desmond says. "But- not to sound self-centered, but what am I supposed to do? They definitely know me."

Desmond doesn't like the smile on her father's face. "Well," he says. "I think you've proved how effective changing your gender can be when you're hiding from someone."

"You want me to dress as a woman to flee the country?"

"You are a woman," William points out.

"That's not the point," Desmond mutters, but William has a point so she doesn't really argue. Instead, she goes with Rebecca into the van and digs through Lucy's stuff in silence. She won't be needing it anymore, and Desmond's close to the same size.

"Do you need a bra?" Rebecca asks, before shaking her head. "This is so weird."

"I'm wearing one already," Desmond says. She's almost flat to begin with, and a sports bra is enough to hide all traces of a figure.

"Mmm…" Rebecca looks Desmond over and shakes her head before throwing some lingerie. "The whole point of this is to make you look like a woman."

"Fine."

They go back to looking for clothes. "This is pretty morbid," Desmond says. "I mean, Lucy was wearing these yesterday."

"I know," Rebecca says. "And you were a man, so…. I don't know, I guess everyone's been lying."

Desmond wants to protest that it's not the same, but… it really is. She hadn't meant to hurt anyone by lying, but that didn't change the fact that she had. "I'm sorry," she says at last.

Rebecca sighs. "I know," she says, tossing a last few bits of clothes Desmond's way. "Get changed."

-/-

Desmond barely recognizes herself, dressed up in Lucy's old clothes. She's been hiding as a man since she was sixteen, and back then she'd still been fighting through puberty. This is the first time she's really seen herself as a woman.

"Wow," Rebecca says. "That's... you look like a different person."

"Yea," Desmond says, and she's surprised at how easily her voice falls out of the affected roughness that's become second nature over the past ten years. "It feels… I dunno." She can't stop thinking about her ancestors in this same situation- in her case, of course, she's always been one gender. There's none of the back and forth her ancestors had to suffer through, but seeing herself now still feels like looking at a stranger.

"Let's just go," she says at last. "We're keeping them waiting."

Outside, Shaun does a double take when he sees Desmond, but William only nods in approval. "Good," he says. "Even if Lucy told Abstergo that you're a woman, they'll still have a hard time recognizing you."

Desmond feels her face go red, and she crosses her arms protectively over her chest. "So how is this going to work?" she asks.

"We're going to catch a flight out of the country," William says. "We'll lie low for a few days, and then head to America."

"Okay," Desmond says, pushing her hair out of her eyes so she can see more clearly. She hasn't had time to cut it since before her kidnapping, and it's pushing down past her chin. Yesterday it had been a hassle, but today it's actually helping her blend in as a woman.

"And you'll have to get back in the animus," William adds, instantly drawing Desmond's attention back to the conversation.

"What? Why?"

"This will probably be the last chance we have to get anything from Ezio's memories."

"So?" Desmond demands. The idea of going back into Ezio's mind at this point is not an attractive one. Desmond can't cope with what her ancestor is going through after losing his twins. Knowing it's her fault turns every second Desmond spends in the animus into something like torture.

"The world's going to end in less than three months," William says. "If there's any chance at all that his memories can give us some kind of advantage-"

"No way," Desmond says. "Absolutely out of the question."

"Why?"

"Because…" But Desmond trails off without finishing her thought. She can't exactly explain, because Lucy was the only one that knew. And now she's dead and a traitor, and Desmond doesn't have the energy to explain the whole gender change issue right now. It's easier to just give in.

"Fine," she mutters. "But I don't think this is a good idea."

Except that no one listens to her, and within twenty four hours Desmond is back in the animus, digging through Ezio's memories again. It's exactly as unpleasant as she'd expected- Ezio is emotionally shaken by what happened in Rome with Leonardo, and it's shockingly obvious to Desmond. Ezio is low energy, barely invested in anything he does. He doesn't even put any effort into hiding his transformation anymore, and while that doesn't surprise any of his contemporaries, it's sort of a shock for the twenty first century assassins watching Desmond's animus sessions.

That's actually a pretty satisfying side effect, and Desmond even manages to enjoy herself a little while everyone else is freaking out.

"What was that?" Shaun demands as soon as Desmond is out of the animus. "Did anyone else see Ezio turn into a woman?"

Rebecca nods, eyes wide enough to make a deer staring at headlights jealous. "That shouldn't be possible."

But William stares at Desmond with one eyebrow raised until she flushes and can't look at him anymore. "Do you want to explain?" he asks.

"You know what happened with Ezio?" Rebecca asks.

"It's complicated," Desmond says, hedging a little.

"No kidding?" Shaun says, with customary sarcasm. "I wouldn't have guessed-"

Rebecca elbows him in the side and glares until Shaun trails off into mumbled complaints.

When Desmond explains, she goes slowly, watching her audience for any signs of confusion or disbelief. She sees plenty of both, and keeps going back and telling parts of it over again, trying to make them understand. By the end of her explanation- more than an hour later- she's pretty sure she just looks crazy.

But to her surprise, Shaun is the only one that objects, and all he wants to know is- "Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"I told Lucy."

"She was a templar!"

"Yea, and I know that _now._"

No one says anything else, and Desmond assumes they're all thinking about Lucy, just like she is. But when the silence stretches on to awkwardness, she lies back on the animus and reenters Ezio's memories.

-/-

That's about the time when things get interesting. Desmond hadn't known about the keys to Altair's library, or what they can do, until Ezio starts hunting them down. Desmond can't pretend she likes the keys much- it's unsettling to see Altair's memories from Ezio's point of view. She can feel both of them in her mind at the same time, Altair completely unaware of his two visitors, and Ezio reacting to every feeling and thought of Altair's. For her part, Desmond just tries to let the memories pass as quickly as possible.

But while Desmond doesn't like the keys, Ezio can't keep himself away from them. For the first time in months, Ezio is excited, even happy. He's unbelievably comforted by knowing Altair was the same as him. And Desmond curses herself again for causing this, because it's really not fair to anyone. It's not fair for her to have to watch it, or to Ezio who had to live it. It's not even fair to Altair, who seems to be the best adapted of the three of them.

She starts losing sleep, lying awake and staring at the ceiling over her bed until sunrise. The cracks in the plaster look like constellations, and Desmond names them all. The closest she gets to sleeping are the animus sessions, when her body is forced into a stillness she can't resists, and her mind goes wandering through time in something close to a dream. It's close to real sleep, but it's not quite the same- Desmond feels tired and sluggish every minute of every day, and she half expects to fall over in exhaustion at some point.

But finally (_finally_) it's her last day in the animus, and Desmond is actually in a pretty good mood when the day's session starts. It helps some that Ezio's mood is just as good, if not better. He's finally tracked down all the keys to Altair's library, and his travels have taken him back to Masyaf. Here is a chance to finally get the answers he's been looking for, and when he's done, Sophia will be waiting for him…

(And Desmond does a double take there, because she's been so focused on Altair she's barely noticed her ancestor falling in love)

Desmond feels his ancestor getting gradually more somber and respectful as he passes through the ruins of the once great building. This place is important to Ezio, full of history in a way that Rome and Constantinople have never been for him. The assassins started here, and Ezio has devoted his entire life to the order. Of course it's important to him.

Ezio finally makes it down to Altair's body (and that's such a surprise to Desmond she almost desynchs from the animus), and picks up the last key from its resting place on a nearby table. The last of Altair's memories- and it must be the last, because Desmond can feel him dying all around her- begins to play out.

This memory is awful and hurts on a level that is mental more than physical because Altair is _dying _and Desmond can feel the world fading around her. It feels like standing in a crowded room, watching everyone else leave and the lights go off. Altair has come here to die, he's _accepted _his death. But Desmond hasn't, and she fights to pull away, like a drowning person struggling toward land.

This is not how today was supposed to go. It's her last day in Ezio's memories. It was supposed to be an easy day, but instead this feels like dying, really like dying, not just like making a mistake and desyncing from a memory-

Something shifts and suddenly Desmond is staggering away from Altair, a barely visible and very surprised shadow on the world. She's separate from Altair, inside his own head, which shouldn't happen. That's not how the animus works. And Altair sees her- incredibly, impossibly, he opens his eyes and looks up and sees her.

Desmond's trembling as she kneels next to Altair, putting herself on the same level as the stooped assassin. She can still feel Altair and Ezio in her mind, their emotions fighting hers, and it's a real struggle to stay herself long enough to say what she needs to say. Altair's hands are cold.

"I'm sorry," Desmond says. Or thinks, maybe. She recognizes dimly that she's not really here, and that it shouldn't be possible to have this direct of an effect on the past. This has already happened. That doesn't stop her from continuing her apology. "It's all my fault."

And she can't manage to explain why, how she ruined his life, who she is, what she's done. She wants to, but she can't. Luckily it doesn't seem matter. She's connected to Altair through the animus, and she can see in that moment that he looks at her _knows_.

"It's alright," he says, which Desmond doesn't believe at all, not after everything she's seen. But Altair only nods to reinforce his words. "I forgive you."

Forgiveness isn't something Desmond has ever expected, and she's almost dizzy with the surprise of it- she smiles grimly and decides that today is just set to be an emotional roller coaster whether she likes it or not.

The world seems to blink and in the next second Desmond is back in Ezio's time, staring down another ancestor that she shouldn't be able to talk to. He studies her with an intensity that doesn't surprise Desmond in the slightest, and says- "I've seen you before. When I was… sick."

Desmond can dimly remember that- being so horrified at the emotions from Ezio's miscarriage that she couldn't handle being in his head. She hadn't realized he'd seen her, but nods anyway.

"I'm sorry," she says. It seems like the only thing she can say, at the moment.

"You said that already," Ezio says, trying to indicate Altair's body without looking at him. "To him."

"What happened to him- what happened to both of you-" she's stumbling over her words now, because Altair's unexpected forgiveness only makes Ezio's unblinking stare harder to handle. She keeps going, babbling slightly. "It's my fault. If I hadn't- if I weren't-"

And suddenly Ezio's eyes go wide, and he looks at her with the same understanding as Altair a few moments-or-centuries ago. "It was you," he says, and his voice has a hard edge that makes Desmond frown.

"I never had a choice," she says. "I know what you've been through. You didn't deserve it."

"No," Ezio grumbles. "I didn't. But…" and Desmond watches Ezio think it over, glancing at Altair's body once or twice. Then he echoes the Syrian assassin. "I forgive you."

-/-

She's cried coming out of the animus before, but this is the first time the tears have really been her own, and not an echo of some emotion of her ancestors. Nobody says anything as Desmond allows herself to cry until she feels empty inside. After everything else that's happened, today turns out to be a good day. Somehow. This is closure like she never expected to have, and for the first time Desmond feels like there might be a life for her after the animus.

-/-

There isn't.

Literally minutes after they get to the temple in New York, Desmond is on her back and back in the animus again, going through the memories of yet another ancestor. And again, that ancestor starts to change between a man and a woman. But just as Desmond is psyching herself up for a really good session of guilt ridden angst, she realizes something.

Haytham Kenway doesn't care at all if he happens to be a man or a woman at any given point in time. He just… doesn't care. Desmond watches him adjust to his life as it is now with a single minded intensity that's honestly impressive. The way he acts, it could have been a change in clothes instead of a change in genders. Haytham spends a few days learning how to move and blend and not be found out as a woman- and then he does something Desmond never would have believed.

He learns to control his transformations.

Desmond is legitimately in awe of Haytham by this point. The man is driven by a single minded determination that doesn't let anything get in his way. Not even turning into a woman. And for a few days Desmond doesn't even mind that she's back to spending all her time in the animus (because apparently that's a necessity, again, and maybe she's never going to be free of the damn machine).

She doesn't even have to feel guilty because Haytham- _he just doesn't care_. Desmond keeps repeating that, over and over and over, because it's great. If this trend has to continue (which it apparently does), she's glad that this time at least she doesn't have to feel like she ruined someone else's life.

Maybe that's why she feels so betrayed when it turns out Haytham is a templar. It's not like he was specifically trying to lie to her or anything, but… he'd been so refreshingly not upset about Desmond accidentally ruining his life. But he'd been a templar the entire time, and Desmond- however reluctant she is to admit the fact- is an assassin.

If there's any comfort to finding out Haytham is a templar, it's that Desmond can't go through his memories anymore after that. His son is born not long after that memory, meaning Desmond doesn't have any more genetic memories from Haytham.

After that, Desmond spends a considerable amount of time and energy trying to convince the people around her that she can't go back to the animus. She has a sneaking suspicion that the next ancestor she sees is going to be Haytham's kid, and unless they can figure out how to skip the kid's childhood, Desmond wants nothing to do with him.

"I'm not doing- you know, _that_- to anyone else," she tells her father. "I didn't have a choice with Altair, or Ezio, or Haytham. Maybe I could have done something, but I didn't, and this time-"

"Get in the animus," William snaps, interrupting Desmond as she slips into a babbling stream of words and panic.

And whatever she says after that, it's like William's not even listening. He probably isn't, and Desmond has never been able to argue with her father when he gets stubborn and stops listening. Before long she's back in the animus, and sure enough there's another ancestor just waiting for his life to be ruined. Desmond suffers through the memories in silence until Ratonhnhaké:ton becomes Connor, until after he grows up and figures his life out a little.

She literally suffers in silence. It's obvious no one is listening to her anymore, and Desmond is just tired. All the time. It's more than physical, more than mental, it's something that gets right down to her spirit and crushes it until she barely knows where she is anymore- in her own head or her ancestor's, it barely seems to matter.

Maybe it's the bleeding effect, or just simple exhaustion, but either way Desmond realizes she's sort of lost the plot. She's barely aware of what's going on in her own life, much less Connor's, and she doesn't even bother to feel surprised when she finds herself sitting on the side of a grave her ancestor is meticulously digging up. The key that is more or less the only reason she's still in the animus is around his neck, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out he must be burying it.

She watches him for a while, and eventually- when Connor looks up at her, surprise obvious on his usually expressionless face- manages to work up the energy to complain. "You don't have to bury it so deep."

"Who are you?" Connor asks, and Desmond hums a little under her breath, thinking it over. A few weeks ago the answer to that question would have been obvious, but she's barely holding herself together and she's not really sure how much of her is left, these days.

"I'm, ah- really tired. That's all."

Connor makes an exasperated noise that almost manages to wring a smile out of Desmond. "That's not an answer," he says, and Desmond shrugs.

"Doesn't matter," she says, because Connor doesn't need to know her whole story. Her attention starts to drift a little, and that would have been the end of the conversation if Connor hadn't spoken up again.

"Why are you here?"

Desmond stirs a little, looking at him and shrugging one shoulder. "I don't really know," she says. "Usually I only get to see people when they're about to die, but you seem fine." If 'usually' can be applied to something that's only happened once so far. "But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to live much longer, so… maybe that's why." She frowns at Connor, abruptly changing the subject. She doesn't want to think about dying, because she's pretty sure she's almost out of time. She's going to die. Soon. "I really admire you, you know?"

"What?"

"Sure." Desmond almost laughs. "I mean, when you first got- what do you call it, a curse?" She only waits long enough for Connor to nod before pressing on. "I thought you were gonna lose it," she says with more honesty than is really polite. "But you're definitely still sane. Like, at least 90% sane."

"Thanks," Connor mutters, looking not at all thankful. Mostly just confused. "I think. How did you know about that, anyway?"

"It's kind of my fault," Desmond says. It's definitely, literally, exactly her fault, no questions asked, but she can't quite bring herself to say that out loud. "So- sorry about that."

"You- how did you-"

She doesn't explain how her being a woman has made Connor into a woman. It's not like she understands the science behind it herself, anyway. "If I knew how it worked I wouldn't have done it, I swear."

"Well, that's reassuring," Connor says, and now Desmond actually does smile. The sarcasm is something she associates more with Haytham than Connor- obviously they've been spending enough time together for the man to start rubbing off on his son. "Why did you tell me not to dig so deep?" Connor asks, but Desmond barely hears him. The world of the animus is breaking up around her as she's pulled out of the machine. She just barely has time to answer.

"Because I'm the one that's going to have to dig it up," she says.

And then in the next moment she's back in the twenty first century, almost falling off the animus as the world spins and blurs around her.

"Were you talking to him?" Shaun asks, and Desmond nods.

"Well that's new," the man mutters, and shakes his head before wandering off. Desmond watches him go- obviously she's not the only one that's getting numb to the craziness. With Shaun gone, Desmond is left alone. It's better that way, really- soon enough they'll have to get moving again, and Desmond doesn't want to find herself bleeding or going crazy halfway through. So she breathes deeply and pulls her mind together, piece by piece, as best she can.

"Desmond."

She looks up and through bleary eyes sees her father standing over her. "Dad," she says. "What do you want?"

"Just checking on you," William says, and for once it sounds like he's actually concerned about Desmond as a person, instead of as a resource. It's so unexpected that Desmond doesn't believe it at first. She narrows her eyes and studies him, making sure he's really there and not some side effect of her ongoing mental breakdown.

"Well… thanks," she says. "I'm fine."

"Are you?"

"…no."

And even though he doesn't say anything else, he doesn't leave either. Just sits there and waits in silence. Desmond doesn't say anything either, but she has a strong feeling that if she had spoken, he would have listened. For once in her life, he would have listened to her, and that's good enough.

It's as good of an ending as she's ever going to get.

**-/-**

**I thought about going farther with this chapter, but let's be honest, we've all played the game. We know how it ends. **


End file.
